South African Mariska Nell, 30 and Australian Marita Peters, 37 are the two UAE-based women have been wearing garbage stuffed cloths every day. Their campaign ‘Waste Me Not’ started on Earth Hour March 24 and will continue till Earth Day on April 22. You can meet Marita Peters and Mariska Nell on the Dubai streets wearing their garbage suits. Mariska is portraying the average person while Marita is depicting a responsible individual.
Dubai based artist Mariska said, “The idea behind our campaign is to create a visual impact of the amount of waste people generate. Most people do not think twice about the trash they make and how it harms the environment. What if there were no bins and you had to carry all the trash on you? Would it make you think twice before using certain items or would you continue to dump?”
Mariska cleaned every single packaged material and washed before put it inside the suit. She can’t do that with food waste so she weigh the amount of wasted food and substitute it with an equal amount of uncooked rice.”
But Marita has no such problem as her suit weighs less than a kilo because of her environmentally conscious habits and she never buys plastic items as they end up in landfills.
Dubai generates an average of 8,000 tons of waste every day. The aim of the campaign is to create awareness so that people know how they can reduce the volume of their waste.
Both the ladies wear a specially designed costume every day in which they carry their waste. The suit has been custom-made by South African designer Jessica Yvonne Burgess under her fashion label Jessibeez Label.
