Chinese Environmentalists Fight Cars With Green Footprints

Hi bloggers!

This weeks final post is about how walking can become a form of art.

Let’s say you’re the first environmental protection non-profit operating in a country with the largest market for cars in the whole world. Let’s say your country’s air pollution problems are getting out of control. Let’s say you want to hammer home the pollution-busting value of walking. Let’s say you have gallons of  non-toxic, washable, quick-drying green paint. Can you imagine our little story?




If you’re Jody Xiong, working with China’s Environmental Protection Foundation, you do this: paint a leafless tree onto a 7-meter wide, 12-meter long white canvas, and lay it over a pedestrian crossing on a busy city street. Next, lay paint-soaked sponges on either sidewalk, so every time a pedestrian crossed the street, they left a trail of green footprints across the canvas…



…making the tree come alive with color.






This action speaks for itself we think. The symbolism is clear, the more you walk, the greener everything gets, and from its initial pilot on 7 main streets of Shanghai, that message was carried to 132 roads in 15 cities across China, with an estimated 3.92 million participants. A follow-up survey pointed to a sharp rise in eco-awareness in the targeted areas (and to underline the message further, one of the green-trodden canvases is now hanging in the Shanghai’s Zheng Da Museum of Modern Art).

This weeks lesson to be learned is that sometimes a lot of tiny steps can add up to one great big one.

So what do you girls think? Would you consider doing a similar action here in Ghent? If so, buy a gallon of green paint, go to your nearest pedestrian crossing, have fun painting a tree or a bush, and make a change!

Sharon, Chloë and Astrid