Environmental Issues: an illustrated series by Eglė Plytnikaitė

A while back we showcased a great series about how much water goes into food illustrated by Eglė Plytnikaitė, an artist from Vilnius, Lithuania. Today, we have a new series to show you by Eglė – this time featuring artworks that raise awareness on environmental issues.

The Hidden Cost of Burning the Fossil Fuels

“Ecology and sustainability have been always important to me. I grew up in a small town surrounded by forests and developed my connection with nature since a very young age so it’s natural that I want to do everything I can to protect it.
I keep “updating” myself by reading articles about environmental issues everyday and I’m honestly aware about all the problems we are facing. I also have worked as a journalist for a while and tried to talk about it through my articles, so when I became an illustrator I decided to share all these ideas by illustrating them. I made a long list of all the environmental issues, chose the ones that seems really important to me and thought about the clever and minimalistic way to illustrate each of them. That’s how the project was born,” Eglė told ZME Science.

Dairy Industry Posing Pollution

“Everyone knows that cars are the cause of pollution but hardly anyone speaks about the fact that cow “emissions” are more damaging to the planet than CO2 from cars. All livestock of the meat and dairy industry are responsible for 18 percent of the greenhouse gases, that’s more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together and the cows are most to blame. So every milk box we buy makes this planet a little bit more polluted and if it continues, we will have to drink the cow milk with the gas masks,” Eglė said.

Driving the Tsunami

Soft Tissue Paper is Hard on the Environment

“It’s old news – toilet paper is made from trees but have you ever thought about the fact the 27,000 trees are cut everyday to produce it? Growing population, adoption of Western lifestyle and sanitation improvements make this number higher everyday. So, searching for the soft toilet paper alternative is definitely something to think about,” Eglė said.