Running the Numbers An American Self-Portrait Astonishing artist Chris Jordan has given his approval for Eco-Sys Action and Boopy to put his incredible images online and spread a positive environmental message. You can see more of his art at www.chrisjordan.com. Below are selected images from “Running the Numbers” exhibit. . Here is Chris Jordan’s message from Seattle where he is based: Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, in the U.S. every month. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibililties of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming. - A quick message from Boopy : While those numbers are for the USA, we can only imagine the full impact from the rest of the world. And we should never forget that we are all responsible for our Earth and we can all make a difference in our daily lives: recycle, switch off lights, take shorter showers rather than baths, select wooden products from certified forests, refuse plastic bags, etc. And many thanks to Chris Jordan

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Oil barrels, 2008 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 28,000 42-gallon barrels, the amount of oil consumed in the United States every two minutes (equal to the flow of a medium-sized river).

Light bulbs, 2008 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 320,000 light bulbs, equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.).

Toothpicks, 2008 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts one hundred million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees cut in the U.S. yearly to make the paper for junk mail.

Plastic cups, 2008 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours.

Plastic bottles, 2007 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.

Jet trails, 2007 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours.

Cellphones, 2007 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.

Paper bags, 2007 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour.

Aluminum cans, 2007 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

Paper cups, 2008 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 410,000 paper cups, equal to the number of disposable hot-beverage paper cups used in the US every fifteen minutes.

Plastic bags, 2007 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.

Office paper, 2007 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 30,000 reams of office paper, or 15 million sheets, equal to the amount of office paper used in the US every five minutes.

Energizer, 2007 Click the image to launch the slideshow. Depicts 170,000 disposable Energizer batteries, equal to fifteen minutes of Energizer battery production. If 170,000 batteries were depicted at their real size, the print would need to be 26x43 feet, as shown here. To depict one year of Energizer disposable battery production (six billion batteries) would require a print 26 feet high by 146 miles long.