A massive plastic bag sculpture was laid out in Christ Church’s Peckwater Quad this weekend, as part of an ongoing campaign to raise environmental awareness.
The six foot letters, each made from around 60 bags, were the work of JCR Environment rep Ed Parker. “I reasoned that if you collected plastic bags from the cupboards of your friends, you’d have enough to build, er, a massive sculpture”, he said.
He aims to end the use of plastic bags by Christ Church students, by the end of his tenure. Parker stressed the scale of the environmental problem.
He said, “If every Oxford undergraduate said ‘yes’ to one plastic bag a day, that would be 4.5 million bags a year.”
The sculpture was well received by students, porters, and even tourists. Parker admits his initial plans were grander: “I wanted to carpet Tom Quad in plastic bags. Then I remembered how big it was.”
The college has wider plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2050. In the short term, funding has been allocated to give every student a ‘bag for life.’
by Oscar Cox Jensen
