Whale Sculpture Made of 5 Tons of Plastic Waste Is an Alarming Example of How Plastic Is Killing Our Marine Life

The “first skyscraper in the sea is the whale” when it bursts out of the water and breaches in all of its glory. That powerful image and the fact that plastic waste is filling our oceans and shores and endangering and killing marine life are what inspired a Brooklyn-based architecture and design firm, STUDIOKCA to create “Skyscraper.” “Skyscraper” is a 38-foot-tall whale sculpture that’s made up of over five tons of plastic collected from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The four-story-tall massive whale sculpture was a part of Bruges Triennial’s 2018 theme, “Liquid City.” The studio, steered by creative and eco-friendly trailblazers Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang, wanted to tackle how cities around the world are contributing to plastic waste, which affects not only marine life but the food chain as a whole, thus affecting humans as well.

“Right now, there is 150 million tons of plastic swimming in the ocean, our oceans, the oceans we share,” Klimoski explained. “Pound for pound that is more plastic waste swimming in the ocean than there are whales. So, an opportunity like this to show the type of plastic and the amount of plastic that ends up in our oceans is really important.”

According to STUDIOKCA “’Skyscraper’ contains nearly 4,000-square-feet of plastic waste, which is just a dent in the 150 million tons of plastic that currently circulates in our seas.” STUDIOKCA teamed up with the Hawaii Wildlife Fund to spearhead multiple beach clean-ups. The discarded plastic from those beach clean-ups created the plastic for the 10,000-pound whale sculpture. What an impactful visual!