REPRESENTATION// Zero Waste Instagram and The Responsibility of Image-Making

Images represent ideas, and on Instagram, where images can be posted with little accountability, it means that big concepts like “#zerowaste” get represented by whoever makes images.

When a movement based on intentional action, making less waste, or mindfulness becomes “content making” for the sake of content making, it doesn’t make any sense.

Are you getting marketed consciousness raising without consciousness? It’s like the wolf in sheep’s clothing expression, only the wolf is consumption, shopping, or distraction, but it wears branded sustainability and says it cares about what you care about.

Is what you’re encountering using sustainability as a skin to mask other motivations? Is there alignment at every level?

Instagram is just a snapshot, its creative freedom to construct a representation. And if we assume that what we see online is the whole picture, it can feed the cultural machine of not feeling ____ enough. Especially when something complex is made to look easy and perfect. And unless we talk about what images actually represent and their impact, then sound bite pictures representing ethical ideologies may be counterproductive.

Sustainability and ethics are still important and worth pursuing, even if they sometimes get used to market other agendas. There's a heart level truth underneath these ideas, we just have to question intentions, separate what's real from what isn't.

Caring for our planet and extending empathy is for everyone.

So, this is not how vegetables come out of the dirt. And if I take and post pictures like this, without talking about what’s implicit, it feels irresponsible. To me this just doesn’t have anything to do with “#zerowaste” anymore. As a representation, this image reveals the massive disconnect between real food grown in the earth, how we experience it in store, and the idea of it as an image in our phones. This picture represents food inequality and a culture of excess. It ignores the whole trail of waste in the supply chain and at home. This picture can represent the privilege of certain kinds waste.