By Leah Collins, CBC News, January 21, 2020
Where there are people, there will be trash. So let's say you're walking some rainforest trail on Vancouver Island, and your boot crunches down on a beer can or protein-bar wrapper. Would Captain Planet's teachings kick in? Would you pocket that junk and bin it later? Or would you keep hiking, trusting nature will eventually absorb that trash into its mossy bosom. What's 500 years or so, give or take?
Alex Stewart, however, is a guy who squats for litter, and the B.C. artist says he doesn't hit the woods without a garbage bag. He makes art for people who might not be as Planeteer-ingly minded as he is, and since 2018, the Fort Langley resident's been hiding his paintings in popular hiking trails around the West Coast, stencilling portraits of mysterious sirens on dead stumps and logs.
Made with biodegradable paints, the images are designed to fade away in a matter of weeks. "A lot of people walk through the trail systems, at least here, and they'll walk by a piece of garbage and not pick it up," says Stewart. "This is a way to get people to engage more with the environment and maybe think a little bit more about it."https://www.cbc.ca/arts/what-does-it-take-to-make-art-green-1.5434773