I have noticed a lot of fabric waste in the wardrobe at my school. Throughout the semester I have been saving fabric scraps from the landfill and collecting them to use in my project. Water is an invaluable resource and we need to preserve and protect it. “It takes 2,700 liters of water to make the average cotton t-shirt and that’s enough drinking water for one person for 900 days” (Mogavero). And “It’s estimated that processing (including spinning, dyeing, finishing) a kilogram of fibre (not just cotton, but also polyester and other materials) requires 100 to 150 litres of water” (Common Objective). By wasting fabric and throwing it in the garbage we are wasting water. We aren’t just wasting water, but polluting it. “About 8% of European microplastics released to oceans are from synthetic textiles — globally, this figure is estimated at 16-35%. Between 200,000 and 500,000 tonnes of microplastics from textiles enter the global marine environment each year” (European Environment Agency). This not only harms marine life but puts the human population in danger as well. Plastic will never biodegrade, it just gets broken into smaller and smaller particles. Small marine life ingest these particles and they get eaten by bigger fish and so on and so forth until that fish is on someone’s plate with a stomach full of microplastics. This harsh reality of pollution and water waste has inspired my figure. You can make something beautiful and loveable out of what other people would deem waste and scraps. I want to create a teddy bear out of the saved materials I have and display it on a bed of plastic that has been shaped to look like waves of water. The plastics I intend to use are those that are not able to be recycled, giving them another life and stopping them from also entering the water system.