Over the past several years, artist Benjamin Von Wong has been on an amazing journey inspiring people to reconsider what they throw away.
It started with a trip to Guatemala and an up-close photoshoot of a massive trash heap there, and quickly morphed into a series of projects designed to confront people with various aspects of the world's waste problem.
As an artist, however, he wanted to do it in a way that would get people to look first before he unloaded harrowing facts about waste on them. There's so much alarmist news out there about what we're doing to our planet that, frankly, after a while, many of us end up turning off to the problem. Von Wong's method of turning trash into something beautiful to get our attention is a different, perhaps more productive approach.
"As human beings, we go through so much sh*t," noted the artist in a blog post on Bored Panda. "Every day, we make dozens of small decisions to buy more stuff – at the supermarket, malls, online… For most of my life, I didn’t think it mattered. After all, I was just one person, making a couple of small decisions."
"But one day, I found myself in a landfill surrounded by an endless mountain of other people’s small decisions and realized that maybe those small decisions did matter."
So, with a veritable army of like-minded volunteers, he created a series of waste-based art installations to help wake others up and see the problem that's all around them.
He put a mermaid in a plastic sea of 10,000 bottles — the same amount the average person uses and throws away in a lifetime.
He created "Toxic Laundry Monsters" to bring the chemicals and micro-plastics that are released every time we do a wash to life.
His latest piece, "Strawpocalypse" is meant to showcase the enormity of the plastic straw problem. It took him and his crew 6 months to collect 168,000 straws recovered off the streets of Vietnam to complete the waves.
In partnership with Laura François and her nonprofit, clothingtheloop.org, Von Wong took thousands of garments that were left in an abandoned factory in Cambodia and made several installations to accent how wasteful the fashion industry has become. You can check out how they made them here.
Photo via VonWong/YouTube.
Photo via VonWong/YouTube.
And this plastic cave was made from 18,000 cups that were collected from a food court in just one and a half days. It really puts that "by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean" statistic into perspective.
The point of all of this, Von Wong hopes, is that more people will start to change their consumption and waste habits. If nothing else, his art shows that one person can make a difference. A big difference.
We're up against a mounting problem, and that can feel overwhelming, but if you pick one thing today — whether it's plastic straws, bags, bottles or how you buy clothes — and make a decision to be more mindful about it, you'll be taking a significant step in the right direction.
Overwhelmed with emotion.
Stressed at the desk, seeking a moment of calm.
Storytime circle with kids and teachers in the classroom.
Anchors aweigh! 
Case in point, not case and point. 
I've been through the desert on a horse with free rein.
Buzz Off Get Away GIF 
"Toe the line" literally means put your toe on the line.
Lena Dunham as Hannah GIF by Girls 
A scene from the film Reality Bites. 
Carol Anne gets in touch with ghosts in the movie Poltergeist. 
Kurt Cobain, the patron saint of Gen X. 
Communications expert shares the 7-word phrase to shoot down anyone being disrespectful
Try this method next time someone says something rude.
A woman can't believe what she just heard.
Getting caught off guard by a rude comment from a coworker, family member, or total stranger can throw you for a loop. You immediately start wondering how you should respond. Should I insult the person right back or play it cool without stooping to their level? Everyone is going to be thrown by a disrespectful comment at some point, so it’s good to have a response in your back pocket for that moment when it comes.
Communications expert Jefferson Fisher provided a great response that we can all use recently on the Mel Robbins Podcast. Fisher is a Texas board-certified personal injury attorney and one of the most respected voices on argumentation and communication in the world. He is also the bestselling author of The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More.
How to respond to a rude or disrespectful comment
Fisher told Robbins that the first step in responding to the comment is nonverbal. You say nothing. “A lot of silence. So often, if you just wait 10 seconds that you're gonna add distance between what they said and how you're going to respond,” Fisher said. “They're saying this to get something out of you, cause in that moment, they're feeling something, whether it's a fear or an insecurity, whatever it is, you're not going to deliver on that same plane that they are.”
The next step is to let the rude person know that their behavior will not be tolerated in a confident manner.
“So somebody says something disrespectful, you give enough silence to make sure that it's a little awkward, and then you're going to say something to the effect of, ‘That's below my standard for a response.’ All of a sudden, you're now making it clear that what you just said was beneath me. And I don't respond to things that are beneath me in that way.”
Throw it back on them
If you prefer to put someone back on their heels instead of squelching the situation as Fisher recommends, John Bowe, a speech trainer, award-winning journalist, and author of I Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in the Age of DisconnectionI Have Something to Say: Mastering the Art of Public Speaking in the Age of Disconnection, says that you should respond with a question: “Do you really mean that?”
“Say it with outrage or dripping sarcasm, with raised eyebrows or deadpan calm. It doesn’t matter. This phrase is quietly disarming and deceptively powerful,” Bowe writes for CNBC. Bowe says the response does two great things for you. First, it gives them a chance to reconsider their words because most rude comments are said without thinking. “By responding with curiosity instead of defensiveness, you’re holding up a mirror. Often, that’s all it takes for the other person to walk back their offense,” he writes.
After the person is asked if they meant what they said, they can double down on their rude comment, but they are probably more likely to backpedal or apologize.
Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life that, unless you live under a rock, you’ll have to deal with people making rude comments. But the best thing you can do is to prepare yourself to confidently put someone in their place so they’ll think twice about ever being rude to you again.