Environmental communication in our mailbox

by Eleonora Anello e Francesco Rasero

Sometimes we receive e-mails from friends or acquaintances, with the request to forward them again. Some organizations have elected this web-based "Word of Mouth" as their communication strategy, which in most cases becomes effective thanks to the reliability of the sender (which acts as a virtual "gatekeeper") and the versatility of the instrument of multimedia presentations.

In 2007 the south-american organization GIA (Grupo de Impacto Ambiental), with the slogan "Reduce, reuse, recycle ...", made a presentation using several slides depicting some of the works of the Us photographer Chris Jordan and send it via email to “friends”. Two years later, the message has not yet ceased to travel around the world. This is a viral campaign produced at no cost that travels in millions of email accounts and each receiver exponentially multiplies the number of receivers.

The images of the presentation are part of the work by the American artist dedicated to environmental issues. "Running the Numbers" (2006-2009) focuses on contemporary consumerism and its huge waste production. To raise awareness, the artist publishes the first series of photographs named "An American Self Portrait", which reveals the numeric quantity of waste produced by his compatriots. In 2008 Jordan broadens his perspective and publishes the first edition of "Portraits of global mass culture" which portrays the same phenomena but on a global scale. The photographer claims to feel dismayed by the amount of waste produced nowadays in the world and with his works hopes to raise questions about the roles and responsibilities of individuals within our society.

The GIA has chosen Jordan’s work because it believes that people today are accustomed to sterile statistics and numerical communication of serious and important phenomena does not hurts anymore human consciousness. So, the “Power Point” presentation, collecting photos by the American artist, is designed to involve the user, inviting him to guess what lies behind the images appearing in full screen. As you go into detail you will see the "truth", what really the photos are made up: 426 thousands of mobile phones thrown every day, or 170 thousand batteries produced every 15 minutes or even 60 thousand plastic bags thrown away every five seconds or two million plastic bottles than every five minutes ends in landfills only in the United States.

The artistic image is then adopted as a means of environmental communication capable of entering into empathy with people, unlike the cold numbers that nowadays leave the recipient almost indifferent. Those who Jordan defines “the horrors of our time", thanks to the GIA have reached millions of mailboxes, with the intent to bring light on waste production issues and to spread the culture of recycling.