I Create Animal Sculptures From Litter That I Find

Ever since I first shared a picture of the turtle I made from litter on my Instagram page, I knew that I needed to make this a regular project. I started picking litter when out walking the dog or taking the kids to school, all in the local area. Soon, #projectlittercritter was born, and people all over the world have been inspired to join in!

Litter and littering is a huge problem. Not only does it threaten and cost the environment dearly, but it’s also costing us too – last year, the local authorities spent £682 million just to keep our streets clean. So I think we can all agree that as a society, we need to not only reduce the amount of waste we produce, we also need to ensure that it’s disposed of correctly. We all see litter – it’s everywhere, so how can we not – but quite often we see it as someone else’s problem – we didn’t drop it, so we don’t have to pick it up. But, once it’s there lying on the floor, blowing around our streets, into our forests, onto our beaches, and into our seas, it is our responsibility. It’s our planet and we should all be working together to clean it up.

My name is Dominique, and earlier this year I took part in a beach clean up whilst on holiday in Malaysia. In just 30 minutes our team collected over a dozen bin bags worth of litter from a small section of beach. With the help of my partner and kids, I used some of the litter to make a sculpture of a Hawksbill Turtle – a critically endangered animal – in order to emphasize the damage that we’re doing to our planet through things such as single-use plastics.

More info: Instagram