- They’re hard to recycle
- Most components of a disposable camera are recyclable but due to them being hard to separate out, a lot of waste disposal and recycling companies refuse to take them. It’s an unfortunate fact but a lot of disposable cameras still end up in landfill.
- Single use items use up valuable resources
- Like all single use items, disposable cameras take up lots of resources and energy through their production and distribution journey. By switching to a reusable point and shoot camera, it will drastically reduce the environmental impact the film photography hobby is having.
Try to use digital as possible
- Analogue photography is very much in vogue at the moment, but it uses specific gelatines and chemicals that are particularly polluting. Unlike digital photos, camera film is made using silver nitrate. This is particularly toxic to aquatic environments, and present in every single film and piece of photographic paper.
- Film also needs to be developed in a lab – a process which uses more environmentally harmful chemicals and leaves behind a fair amount of plastic waste (film cartridges and developed rolls). Digital cameras may use more electricity, but on balance they’re still more eco-friendly.
If film is an urge
- Creating this Sharable Camera site
- where people can sell/buy/trade/rent cameras
Try Plant Based Photography
Why not swap your glossy photo paper for a leaf, or your camera for a bowl of cress.
‘If we understand photography in a pure sense as writing with light, then photosynthesis or photo bleaching (where pigments become lighter if exposed to more sunlight) can be considered photography.’
By laying a negative over a leaf and leaving it in direct light, I can print images directly onto the plant. Doing the same for cress, treating each cress leaf like a single pixel in an image which will wither away when the cress dies after a couple of days.
- start to create sharable camera site that is divided to different categories
- try new leaves printing technique
LOUISA FANG