WEST COLUMBIA, S.C. — A 27-foot-long water bottle made from nearly 12,000 water bottles is helping the City of West Columbia bring attention to the impact of single-use plastic.
The City of West Columbia has been asking residents to bring in used water bottles and to #TakePrideintheWestSide and #KeepWeCoClean by not littering.
The reason for these water bottles has been revealed.
The City of West Columbia unveiled a 27-foot-long and 9.5 feet in diameter bottle sculpture on Friday, September 27, at the West Columbia Riverwalk Amphitheater.
Karl L. Larsen, a Columbia native, is the creator of the sculpture. Larsen locally sourced nearly 12,000 bottles in less than a month from citizens.
The city recently launched an anti-littering campaign and in correlation with this art project, the goal is to make visitors and residents aware of how keeping their surroundings free from litter will help keep the city and rivers clean.
The public can help with this initiative by cutting back or eliminating convenience-based single-use plastic packaging, reusing and recycling, cleaning natural spaces, getting involved with local litter clean-ups and spreading the word about projects like this one.
The sculpture has a bench inside so visitors can sit. The city hopes the space provides a space for "contemplation and reflection of one’s personal consumption behaviors."
According to the city, the 12,000 plastic bottles used can be sourced in the United States in only three seconds, giving this project its title. The vision with "Three Seconds…and Counting" is to show citizens the harm of single-use plastic bottles in natural spaces.
The artist and city asks people to use the hashtags #3seconds and #TakePrideintheWestSide when posting about this sculpture.
Larsen has created murals, interactive public art installations, abstract paintings and sculptures. Larsen believes that in order to find a solution to the problem of litter, people have to be proactive and take responsibility for what they purchase.
"We must look at our consumption in a new way because this 'out of sight, out of mind' attitude we have about our waste over the last five decades is what got us here. We need to see our litter," Larsen said. "By scaling up a common single-use plastic bottle, I wanted to do just that. I wanted to purposefully obstruct and restrict the view of a natural area yet design a thoughtful concept that allows for personal reflection and contemplation. To be consumed by that which you consume. That’s what this is about."
Larsen created the sculpture from local waste to emphasize the issue.
"They were pulled from the banks in which this sculpture rests… the day of installation. My hope with this project is for it to allow us to rethink how we consume; for it to spark conversation and harbor collaboration in efforts to curb or eliminate single-use convenience-based plastic products and packaging from our lives for a cleaner future for generations to come,” Larsen said.