Americans Photographed in 7 Days Worth of Their Trash

Here’s something to make you think about consumer society. According to data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces more than 4 pounds of garbage per day. That’s more than double the amount produced in 1960, and it’s 50 percent more than the amount produced by Western Europeans. With this in mind, photographer Gregg Segal created his ongoing series, ‘7 Days of Garbage,’ which shows Californian friends, neighbors, and relative strangers lying in the trash they created in one week.

Segal decided to photograph the participants in front of naturalistic backgrounds to show that the garbage produced by us is effecting it directly. “Obviously, the series is guiding people toward a confrontation with the excess that’s part of their lives. I’m hoping they recognize a lot of the garbage they produce is unnecessary”, he told Slate.

Some of the participants were too ashamed of how much trash they actually produced weekly, so they edited their garbage bags. Others showed everything, and that’s indeed what appaears to be realistic with most of us…

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via Slate  h/t boredpanda