The Power We Hold Podcast S01 Ep09: Leave It Better NYC - Happy Earth Day 2023!

Thank you for joining me, your host, eco-visual artist Vanessa Albury, on my journey to becoming a better ally to people of all diversities (bipoc, LGBTQAI2S+, non-normative brained and embodied +) and steward of the environment in podcast form as The Power We Hold! This is part of Coral Projects' work in eco-consciousness healing. My co-host, Caleb Williams, is also an artist. She is 21 years my junior and makes art about her experience as a Black woman in America. We have in-depth conversation together and with others about difficult topics full of love and healing.

It's been 63 years since the first Earth Day. It was a revolution. It was not a sale on your next new whatever. Today we need that revolution more than ever. Revolution can be joyful. It is fun to heal! It is fun to adjust towards love. There are no quick fixes. To bring everyone along there are no easy answers, but there are WORTHY questions and WORTHWHILE solutions available for us, if we do the work. I don't know what they are because we haven't fully committed yet as a collective to the questions, but I do know from my own experience of asking hard questions, being vulnerable and leaving no one out , something better than I can imagine happens. So let's do the work, together! Together is the only way! Calling everyone in IS the way.

I did just that.  Today I share background and details of Leave It Better NYC, an eco-performance art piece I completed yesterday in honor of Earth Day. Since Earth Day is today, Saturday, I chose end of business Friday to deliver back to the owners of Poland Spring and Blue Triton (which makes Poland Spring) 377 single-use plastic water bottles, caps and labels I collected from the streets of NYC on my walks and bike rides from September until April 20th. I emptied the 2 recycling bag full in the lobby of their offices at 30 Rock Plaza and well, they didn't really like it. But you know what, I don't like seeing their trash all over the streets and knowing that it ends up the oceans increasing global temperatures and acidification. Examining our own trash can be a bitter pill to swallow when you aren't accustomed to examining your crap. I also delivered a 2-page letter to the owners and partners of One Rock Capital Partners, the $6B company that owns Poland Spring,  full of love and invitation to step up to be the global leaders we need them to be.

PLEASE get inspired to make your own giant leaps in going green! It's safe to learn! It's safe to try something else out and risk being liked by others for love! The love of self, others,  and the love of this BEAUTIFUL and FASCINATING planet that we get to call home! Enjoy!

Show Notes:
 The Power We Hold Podcast IG, website
Vanessa Albury IG, website
Coral Projects IG, website + Make a tax-deductible donation
Caleb Williams IG, website

Music Clear Skys by Wael Elhalaby IG, Soundcloud
Audio Editing by Bryan Klausing Rain Junkies website, LinkedIn

Coral Projects in Italy + Hyperallergic

 Allegorie, food-waste plant-leather company with gorgeous accessories

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the Power We Hold Podcast. 
I'm your host, Vanessa Albury. And this is kind of an impromptu episode for Earth Day. Happy Earth Day, world. Happy Earth Day Humanity. 

Today, I want to tell you about something I did today to honor Earth Day and some would call it crazy. Some would call it stupid. Some would call it pretty cool and that's me. And some might question the legality of it. But yeah, I don't, I don't think it's illegal to give someone back what they made, right? Like that would be interesting. So what did I do? I executed the final act of Leave It Better, New York, which is a performance art piece with single-use plastic water bottle litter. I have ground rules for the kind of litter that I pick up. I don't just pick up um every plastic bottle in front of me. They have to be water bottles and they have to be on my path where I'm walking or biking that day and then also not super gross. Like not in a puddle or not having yellow liquid in it. So yeah, I I basically I gave back to the company, One Rock Capital Partners who owns Blue Triton, which is the company that owns Poland Spring, Deer Park and a number of other plastic water bottle companies. And they co-own it with Mitsubishi Corporation. I gave them back their litter, their litter from the city streets.

And, I completely used my best professional white woman look. And I approached everyone that I interacted with kind, with kindness and with love because actually this project is; it's a love project. It's a project of love for everybody, for the planet, for you, for me, for even the people that create the plastic bottles that are clogging our waterways and littering the streets of New York. I can't walk down the streets of New York without seeing specifically a Poland Spring water bottle discarded on the ground.

Yes, there are other water bottles as well. But let me tell you, it's like 85% Poland Spring. And I've been looking, I've been looking since, since September, I've been collecting these bottles to return to their, their maker. And, but I, I believe that returning is a calling in. It's perhaps confrontational way to say, look, you know, you're making this thing and you're not taking any accountability or responsibility for where it ends up. That ain't cool. So, yeah, it was really interesting. You know, the whole process from collecting the bottles, you know, around the city. Like when I first started doing it, I had some shadow about people thinking I was weird because I was picking up, you know, trash from the ground. But actually a few people thanked me a few different times, which I found endearing and yeah, you know, leading up to today, there was a lot of internal work. Like am I good enough to pull this off? Like, can I, am I safe? Am I, am I going to get in big trouble? This is just my own personal psychology. But you know, I knew that my why is bigger than my fear. And so sometimes you have to do things even though you have fear and love yourself through it because what's on the other side is important. And I knew this project was important. I knew it was important since the moment it came to me, which was when, when I was in Italy over the summer in August, citing the first underwater eco works temporary sighting for coral projects. 

So, yeah, so today I delivered two full big, I think they're 15-gallon, clear plastic recycling bags full of crushed water bottles, and I crushed them so I could fit more in. There were 295 bottles, 73 loose caps and 9 plastic labels including um the plastic that covers like a 24 pack of bottles. So that's um 373 pieces of litter. 372 pieces of litter, 377. How about, let's do some math 377 pieces. And one thing that struck me today about this delivery is that if you're nice to people, you know, you can pretty much get whatever you want when you're a white woman. At the very least if you're dressed appropriately, I was able to gain access to their offices in 30 Rock Plaza just by having a commercial invoice available. And, you know, I'm there to deliver an artwork and I had the name of the person who owns the business. And, so I was able. They called, the security. called the offices and the let me up. The gave me a badge and everything and then I walk in the doors. 

You know, the woman is looking at me a little odd because I'm carrying these two big trash bags full of plastic bottles. And, you know, I just approached the counter like this is any old day for me and I had an invoice for her to sign to prove receipts and I had a second copy for her typical, you know, delivery stuff. But then it's like, well, what do you, what do you want to do? What, what are you here for? And so the front desk lady called, another lady who is the assistant of Tony Lee, the co-founder of One Rock Capital Partners and um, a managing partner still in the company that, and this is the company that owns Blue Triton that um creates Poland Spring water bottles. So, you know, very pleasant conversation ensues for about 10 or 15 minutes. And with the assistant as well, the, the, the secretary, what she called herself. But I, I guess it's like an administrative assistant of Tony Lee. And you know, there was, I wrote a letter which I'lI read to you here and I handed that to her. She's like, can I read this? I'm like, of course, you know, everything she asked, I'm like, yes, absolutely, please. Yes. 

And I answered the questions to the best of my ability and I sat and I waited and I was like, I'm here to install the work in his office and, she's looking at my bags and, you know, she's laughing because she's confused and, and she's like, is this part of SNL? I know Saturday Night Live is in the building. I'm like, no, but it is a creative practice. It is an art project. So, you know, you're not too far from the mark. Yeah, I just had fun with it. I don't know what else to say about that. And then it came down to the moment, you know where she was, like, why I don't think, I don't think we can accept it. And I was like, well, I have, you know, I have instructions to install the work. 

So I just, I just turned the bags upside down and, you know, the, these few 100 pieces of plastic fell out onto the floor and she's like, oh, no, you know, this is a pristine white walls, white floor, 54th floor of the 30 Rock Plaza office. And I'm and I've dumped dirty littered plastic water bottles into their floor. And they didn't like it. But listen, I don't like walking down the city streets and seeing plastic water bottles rolling around like tumbleweeds. Like I'm in some plastic water bottle, tumbleweed video game. It hurts my feelings. And when I started picking up the bottles that, that hurt feelings, started to repair, there's something very tangible about using your body towards the good that you want to see in the world, like taking an action towards the way that you envision the world to be from a place of love. 

Yeah. So I promptly left after I dumped the bottles and the woman called out after me. What's your name? And I was like, it's Vanessa. Thank you. Uh And then I just, I left. And yeah, the curator Eileen Jen Lynch, the curator of uh Porthole Waves (Svabard) from Stream to Sea. That's on the Apple Bank on the Lower East Side, New York City's first biodegradable mural since plastics were invented. In my first mural ever is on view and she curated, she, she asked, if they called the police and I don't know if they did, but I was thinking about that.

Like, wouldn't it be interesting? Just as a thought experiment? I don't necessarily want to stick around to know if somebody's going to call the police on me for dumping plastic water bottles in their offices. But if you're returning to someone, something that they made and even if they don't want it back, is that, is, is there like legal grounds for action there? You know, is that against the law? I, I kind of, I, I think that would be interesting. I think that would be interesting to follow. Yeah, so I'm going to read you the letter that came with this action that I delivered today. 

It is to Tony Lee, R. Scott Spielvogel, who is his partner, co-founder of the company and the Mitsubishi Corporation and then cc'd all their managing partners, 

April 21st, 2023 

Dear, Mr Tony Lee, Mr Scott Spiegel, Spiel Vogel and the Mitsubishi Corporation,

I hope you're enjoying springtime in New York. I love New York City. I love being a human on planet Earth. All the diversity and the magical power to heal and transform here seen in forests, oceans and even our I bodies is astonishingly powerful. And lights me up. Do you feel the same way? I am gifting you a very special artwork. Leave it better NYC to you, Mr Tony Lee and R. Scott Vogel and the Mitsubishi Corporation and your associates of One Rock Capital Partners to encourage you to be the leader we need in the plastics industry. I believe in calling in. I believe we can all be part of the change we need to see in our activity on earth to support life here. I know you didn't invent plastic or start selling Poland Spring in plastic, single-use bottles. But you perpetuate this toxic commerce and profit from it now. So I returned these bottles. I found littered in my city, New York City to you because you have the power to do something about this. As the owners of Blue Triton and Poland Spring Water Company, you are world leaders in bottled water. You set the market trends and you have a choice. Now, what will you do with these plastic bottles you have created and distributed into the world? And you have a choice. In fact, in every moment, will you approach your company activity from a perspective of profit over public health and planetary health? Or will you realize your power and adjust for the greater good? Will you move the industry to do justice by your consumers? New York City?

And really all the residents of the planet, will you lead the bottled water industry in making sustainable and desperately needed ecos shifts to support life on planet Earth. Planet Earth will survive our abusive plastic technology of that. I'm crystal clear, but the question is, will we, will we survive ourselves here on planet Earth? Our only home, at least for now. As owners of Poland Spring, you hold a very sizable power here in our future on Earth. As a species. The question is, will you step up and take responsibility or will you continue to recklessly pump single use plastics into our economy and city streets with no real viable solutions to recapture them. You can send this gift of your plastic output to a dump. You could send it to a recycling plant or you can use it as a tool, use it to consider how you reclaim these bottles back from the world so that they do not clog the waterways and pollute the planet.

What will you do today right now to move in into a new direction of not creating more single use plastics? What is the next right step towards an eco sustainable business model that considers fully planetary and environmental impact? I have some ideas. You are perhaps not surprised, transition to a potable water station over plastic bottles in stores, sell reusable containers or at least truly recyclable ones like cartons, invest in bio plastics that biodegrade, shift your supply chain to accommodate the lifespan of biodegradable materials, invest in the material you need to meet your huge market share that is eco-friendly and fully reclaimable or biodegradable. Even cans are at least fully recyclable and that technology is widely available. I don't believe you have to stop your production and close your company, but adapt it and don't stop improving. Not for the love of money, but for the love of service, healing and doing right by the planet, which is PS doing right by your customer, your business and yourselves. You are the industry leader. You set that tone, be the powerfully responsible leader that we need, I believe and choose that. 

The litter of plastic bottles all over New York City is as much my responsibility as it is yours though, I do not buy nor drink from plastic water bottles. If I see it and walk by it, then it impacts me. That's a choice I make just as it is your choice to make, buy, sell or even litter a plastic water bottle. If we all choose responsibility instead of quote, it's too big of a problem and quote or quote, the next person or the city or whomever will do it. End quote. Nothing is actually done. The responsibility falls on each of us squarely for each piece of trash litter and single use plastic everywhere in the world. I choose how I act on my responsibility just as you do. So I have Spent September 2022 to Earth Day 2023. Collecting many of the plastic bottles I have passed on my walks and bike rides in the city. I now return them to their maker. You the people who produce and profit from their existence. The vast majority of the plastic water bottles rolling around the streets of New York have your name on them. As you can tell by this sample I have provided in the art installation I give to you, leave it better. NYC I choose that my responsibility is to support bringing awareness of the problem forward via an uncomfortable and unconventional exchange. This is what I can do with my resources. What can you do with yours? What burden of end of life of a bottle is on the consumer and what end of life burden is the responsibility of the makers? As the makers, you are setting the standard of single use plastic around the world. I ask you with all the love in my heart to please do better. We all need you on board for the change humanity needs in our relationship to the planet. 

You may be aware that tomorrow is Earth Day. In fact, all of April is Earth Month, but I think we can all agree that every day is really earth day since earth is our only home every day. If we want to not only survive but thrive on planet Earth, we have to do better together. Please do your part. I'm available to support your problem solving on this matter. Reach out yours truly and sincerely, Vanessa Albury, founding artist choral projects. And I gave them my email address they also have on the invoice, my phone number. And then I also gave them a label for the artwork which just reads Vanessa Albury for Coral Projects. Leave It Better NYC, 2023 295 reclaimed litter, single-use plastic water bottles. 73 loose caps, 9 plastic wrappings, unique installation for the office of One Capital, One Rock Capital Partners. I Vanessa Albury, bestow this as a gift of Leave it better in New York City to you Mr. Tony Lee and the managing and operating partners of One Rock Capital Partners, owners of Poland Spring and Blue Triton to encourage you to do better. So what did you do today? What are you gonna do to celebrate Earth Day? I also found it interesting that on my path to deliver this work.

Well, I asked people that I passed to take my picture and to help me document it. I also wore a Gopro so I actually have the whole thing recorded. And then I also took a sample audio recording on my cell phone and took pictures myself. But also on my walk, I noticed that I took the path that I used to take to um a job I had where I worked at Rockefeller Center uh at a retail store at Anthropology, twice once as a part time employee and once as a seasonal employee. And it was really uh heartwarming for me personally on a personal note to take that same path from my house to literally I walked right by the shop. But for a different purpose for my life's purpose, not for a paycheck at a underpaid, overworked work condition that produces let's be honest, fast, fast fashion. That also is one of the biggest polluters of our planet. It felt really good to be doing something that I believe in um on that path. So that was one thing. And then when I left, I was drawn towards Central Park. It's only a few blocks north of Rockefeller Center and, and I just took a path guided by intuition. 

And I looked across the pond and I noticed the bridge that Marthe Ramm Fortun and I performed Primal Scream on in, it must have been, it must have been April early April at 2007. We were studio neighbors at NYU in our first year. And it also felt really good to be back on that path as well. That path that we took from the train to that location on the bridge where we, we screamed our heads off. It was really interesting the reasons why we screamed too, like Marthe was screaming for like the joy and the beauty of the chaos of Spring and me for like the devastation of how we treat the planet and how, how our lives play out on earth. So her scream was kind of joyful and mine was like, uuuuhh, it was like very guttural, but yeah, so it's really, a day of landmarks for me. I don't know exactly what is next for me. I did pass more Poland Spring water bottles afterwards on my way to my friend Afruz Amighi beautiful performance at the Asia Society afterwards with my friend Jeremy Olson, amazing painter. And you know, part of me wanted to pick them up. But part of me knew that, that I need to digest this for a minute. I, I don't know that that's the next step. 

This step as I mentioned, came to me while I was in Italy creating, Leave It Better. The first version which um was inspired by and I received as a gift from the city of Santa Catarina di Nardo where I installed Coral Projects in the lonian Sea off the coast of this rocky cliff, this rocky shoreline. People just trash that, that town. There's just litter everywhere. And so, and it hurt my feelings. It hurt my feelings then too. So I picked up about 1000 pieces of liter over over a few days and I made these bundles, these litter bundles and I would leave them on people's car windshields with a note. That was one side in English, one side in Italian, explaining, you know, this litter is all of our responsibility and it washes into the sea and it, you know, kills, the sea life that's vital for our human health. You like seafood, right? Well, it's more than that. The, the health of the water is the health of your body and all water is one water, not just the oceans and the streams and the rivers that are all one water, they're all interconnected systems, but our bodies are at least 70% water. We are water too. 

And there is no barrier. There is no difference between people and nature, between the water in my body and the water in the sea. It's, it's all the same thing. So anyway, so I made these bundles and I left them on people's cars and um of the probably two or 300. 1, I know that I think it's 290 something that I left on cars. A few, maybe a dozen ended up back on the street and I would just re gift them to another car. I ended up putting and didn't know this at the time, a bundle on a photographer of the Associated Press and on his car. And so a writer from La Repubblica wrote about the project and called my bundles fines, which I thought was a fun way to put it. So, anyway, as I was collecting the litter, you know, at first I was collecting it and putting it in the trash and I realized, you know, yeah, it takes care of that one piece of litter, but it doesn't actually make an impact in the way that we need an impact. 

So then I started to think of how can I like, softly confront people because you don't want to be too aggressive, you don't want to turn people off. But how can I bring this forward, this problem forward? And so I realized like, if I give people trash, then they have to decide what they're going to do with it. Are you going to recycle what you can, are you going to just put it back on the ground? Are you going to take it home and put it in the actual trash? You know, when you're given something, you then have a choice whether or not you're consciously aware of it. And that's another thing. But the note that I left hopefully brought that conscious awareness forward anyway, as I was doing that, I, I was thinking about the responsibility of whose responsibility is it, is it the city’s responsibility to clean up the streets? Well, maybe, is it the person who bought the thing's responsibility to properly dispose of it? Uh, definitely.

But also there's a party who we are not holding responsible, which is the maker of the thing. And actually that is the party with the most resources to do something about the problem. The end of life of any product should be the responsibility of the maker and the distributor of that product. If you're making something, putting it out in the world, it should be your responsibility to have a plan for how it's reclaimed, recycled, renewed. I don't think the plastic water bottle industry is, you know, buying into that. I don't think they've considered it at all. And if they have considered it, it's only because it's been like bad press. You know, I, I like to think the best of everyone. I like to think we're all doing our best but, you know, nice people, good people. They do bad things too. And, that was something that I was confronted with today in the offices like these, the women that I was talking to, they were very nice, you know, and they are, they're having a human response to a very awkward exchange and I get that. But they are also the representatives of a $6 billion company that pumps single use plastic into the stops and then has no viable like recycling plastic is a joke for the large part. And that 5 to 10% of what you put in the recycling bin actually gets recycled for plastics. Not true for glass, not true for aluminum and metals but plastic. It's a real abysmal situation. And they, yeah, they're responsible for, for all these bottles that are just drifting around the streets and, and then washing into the waterways. Yeah. And like I said, it hurts my feelings, it hurts my feelings and the pain is enough to do something about it. And the reward is very interesting. I highly recommend you do things that feel uncomfortable and that are outside of society. 

You know, I'm really fortunate in that I've made choices in my life to to be able to do things that other people can't, won't and don't consider doing. I'm an artist. I live in the world and in my own world, I create my own world. Truly, we all do that, but I do it consciously because I have chosen in this lifetime to be a visual artist. And I have also chosen to be an eco-friendly artist. So, you know, I don't take it for granted that the choices that I have made have left me in that in between space of being able to look at society and think about it differently and do something about it through my work. I can call it my job. But listen, you can too, you don't have to be an artist to be an activist. You don't have to be an artist to love other people, to love the planet and to love the cities that you live in. And you don't have to be an artist to love making an action that makes a difference. And I highly recommend doing things that you think other people will think you're crazy for doing. It's very rewarding because it frees you. Who cares what other people think. It doesn't matter. What matters is integrity, what matters is love, what matters is healing, what matters is doing, what's right and good and loving for all of us, that's what matters. 

So if you want to catch up on more about this project, please follow @coral.projects on Instagram, you can also visit the website coral projects.com. We are working on a feature length film with an amazing, I've brought in an amazing group of diverse, beautiful, brilliant minds and creators to support me in creating this film. It's going to be incredible. We are accepting donations via my fiscal sponsor, which is on the coral projects website. You can also contribute by supporting Allegorie, the plant-based, food-waste leather company. They make amazing wallets and bags that are unisex and beautiful, well-designed a mode for absolutely anyone and everyone. Heather of the company is our next podcast episode Caleb and I sat down with her. But this is coming out before that. 

Yeah, so I want to thank you so much for sticking with me and joining me on this wild, this wild ride of becoming a better steward to the planet and a better ally to people, of all our beautiful differences, I really believe. And I see in my life every day, the beautiful benefits of collaborating across our differences, of embracing our diversities an embracing, moving our lives towards symbiosis with the planet. We are basically parasites on this planet right now and we are um we're not supporting our host. We need to support our host planet Earth and create a beautiful symbiotic relationship with the only home that probably I'm gonna guess what we're ever going to have as a species. Maybe life on Mars. We'll see. But I like to be able to breathe outside on the planet. So I don't know if there's another place where we can do that. Ok. Thank you so much. I send you all so much love.

And may you have a beautiful, beautiful Earth Day.