Japanese artist Miwa Koizumi creates extraordinary, ethereal sea creatures out of New York City’s discarded soda bottles. Koizumi, who came to NYC after graduating from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, was astonished by the amount of refuse we New Yorkers generate, and disturbed that Americans only recycle 23 percent of our plastic bottles. So she found a way to fashion soda bottles into stunning (but not stinging) jellyfish and anemones.

At a time when we’ve got a vortex of plastic trash the size of Texas swirling around in the Pacific Ocean and marine animals are routinely choking to death on our debris, it’s nice, for a change, to see some of our discarded plastic being turned into sea creatures instead of ending up in sea creatures.

To find out what you can do to fight the pollution of our oceans, go to Greenpeace.org.