One Person Can Change the World
Farquhar Honors College
Teagle Foundation - Knowledge for Freedom Program
Trash to Treasure Art Gallery
To what extent can participating in the “trash into treasure” movement reduce municipal waste?
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Samaya L.
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June 29, 2023
“Trash to Treasure” is an upcycling movement where recyclable items that are often regarded as undesirable trash can be transformed into innovative objects or beautiful “treasure”. So, to what extent can participating in this movement reduce waste made by cities in Florida, such as the city I live in, Coral Springs.
My Change Project will take an artistic approach of informing my audience of how everyday items that are often regarded as “trash” can be more than just recycled, but upcycled, and repurposed into new, innovative items such as decorated planters and storage crafts, or a type of “treasure”. I plan to implement this project by using my own artistic abilities to create a series of paintings, sculptures, and show other upcycling techniques or projects to the public. My change project will help solve the problem of the increased amounts of municipal waste in Florida by repurposing recyclable items instead of recycling them. I am focusing specifically on implementing this change in the city I live in, Coral Springs. The purpose of my project is to reduce the municipal waste created by Coral Springs and inform the public of the “trash to treasure” movement could be useful in reducing waste in other cities in Florida as well. I have a step-by-step plan on how to implement this change by first, creating a series of artworks from recyclable waste that will highlight the environmental issues that municipal waste causes. For example, landfills, and different waste management sites, harm animals by taking their habitats and cause water and air pollution. Then, since I am an officer of two clubs at my school (Art Club and Key Club), I will present upcycling workshops to the members of both clubs. I am also planning to implement an upcycling activity into the springtime Art Show Zone Rally hosted at my school (Coral Glades High School), attended by a multitude of Broward County residents, and planned by our school’s Art Club, allowing the public to be made aware of the issue and make “trash to treasure” creations of their own. This will allow them to understand the importance of reducing waste by making something innovative and creative, instead of only recycling, which may only cause more waste to be piled instead of effectively and immediately managed. I am also currently working on reaching out to my local museum, the Coral Springs Museum of the Arts, so I can maybe display my art in a gallery or exhibit to a wider public, to show the impactful pieces that I have created with recyclable items, that are often just thrown away. I also want these artistic pieces to inspire others to create works of art from recyclable materials and understand that there are no limits to what the imagination can create.
Public Resource List
“Upcycled Art, When Waste Becomes Art.” Iberdrola, 22 Apr. 2021, https://www.iberdrola.com/culture/recycled-art#:~:text=The%20environmental%20benefits%20of%20recycled,to%20work%20with%20these%20materials. Accessed 26 June 2023.
This article, from the website Iberdrola, informs readers of how making upcycled art is a beneficial practice that can reduce the amount of trash that piles in city landfills and waste management sites, allowing the reuse of waste into complete masterpieces that can change the way you look at everyday recyclable trash. This article also displays a multitude of different famous upcycling artists.
This source is credible since it is written in 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still going on, causing trash in certain areas to pile due to most people staying in their homes. The information in this source is relevant to my research question because it explains how recyclable waste can be upcycled, instead of being thrown away to be added to collections of municipal waste. The information presented in this source is accurate since this article was published by the Iberdrola company, which is recognized as a lead Spanish company in solid waste upcycling into sustainable energy and storage. While the information in this source is very credible and reliable, it does not accurately show how trash can be repurposed into useful items and only displays artwork. However, this source can help explain what my change project of implementing the “trash to treasure” movement will be about, how waste will be reduced, and how upcycling of trash can be.
Crawford, Carol. "Trash to treasure." School Arts, vol. 105, no. 2, Oct. 2005, p. 49. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A137406141/AONE?u=novaseu_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=951fca09. Accessed 22 June 2023.
This article, written by famous sculptor Carol Crawford, informs teachers of what the “trash to treasure” movement is and persuades them to try creating different types of upcycled art. The Russian-American upcycling artist, Louise Nevelson, is also presented in the article with an example of some of her artworks, processes, and implementations of upcycling.
This source is somewhat credible since it was published in October of 2005. The information of the source is relevant since it explains how the “trash to treasure” movement allows value to be found in items that were once discarded, conveying the relation to the quote of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. This article was written by Carol Crawford, an artist and sculptor, who holds a Bachelor of Arts and has studied Fine Arts at a University. This makes her qualified in explaining how trash can be upcycled to create “treasure” or art masterpieces. She presented this information with the intention to encourage teachers to teach the youth about upcycling and how upcycled art can be produced, essentially bettering the environment. While this source is very accurate and reliable, Crawford has not shown a variety of different examples and artworks of the movement. The article was also published in 2005, meaning it lacks some credibility. However, the source gives a good interpretation of what the movement is about with ideas, processes, and examples of trash can be turned into treasure of some kind from a qualified artist, increasing the validity of the source. I will use this source to give the public an idea of how upcycling for the “trash to treasure” movement can be implemented in my school’s Key Club and Art Club when creating are work from recycled trash.
El-Rayes, Nesreen, et al. "Plastic Management and Sustainability: A Data-Driven Study." Sustainability, vol. 15, no. 9, Apr. 2023, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A749234326/AONE?u=novaseu_main&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=67a853b4. Accessed 26 June 2023.
This article informs the readers about the worldwide plastic crisis and how the overproduction of plastic is negatively impacting the environment. The article also presents a study done, which had the goals of examining the progress of plastic management research and performing an analysis of the information on exponential global increase of plastic, compared to the plastic waste collection of U.S government, profit, and non-profit organizations from recent years. This source highlights the main problems that arise from the plastic crisis and informs readers of roots and causes of the problem, while also presenting studies done by researchers, scientists, and organizations to solve the global plastic crisis by effectively managing the growing plastic waste.
This source is very credible since it was written in the current year of 2023, in the springtime. This source is relevant to my topic because it explains part of the “why” of my change project, as in: “Why is reducing municipal waste important?” This source answers this question, stating that the plastic crisis is a global problem where plastic is being produced at an extremely high rate, meaning that plastic waste cannot be effectively managed. According to the authors of source, Nesreen El-Rayes, Aichih (Jasmine) Chang, and Jim Shi, the global production of plastic is “expected to fluctuate between 500 and 600 million metric tons by 2025”. The authors of the source are credible since they are from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, meaning they have some knowledge of how technology has been implemented to solve this problem, and it is also seen that they have researched several studies that they have incorporated into their source. The information in this source is accurate since it displays the findings and strategies of these studies, increasing the validity of the source. While this source is credible and informative when stating one of the main topics of the problem of municipal waste, the source does lack some relevancy. This is because the source states: “Little research is related to scaling up the plastic waste collection and re-thinking or re-designing products”, which is not helpful since one of the main aspects oof my project is upcycling and turning trash into innovative “treasure’. However, the source does display some studies that present accurate information of how plastic products can be re-used or made to be more innovative, even though this is not a main focal point of the text. This source will be useful when presenting my project to the public because it will help them create an understanding of how the overproduction of plastic is one of the main contributors to the problem of increased municipal waste and should be one of the active waste products to be upcycled.
Glesner, Kalin. “Trash to Treasure.” Health and Environmental Humanities Artistic Expression Portfolio. UFC Pressbooks, 2020, https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/healthandenvironmentalhumanitiesportfolio20fa/chapter/kalin-glesner/. Accessed 26 June 2023.
This source, written by Kalin Glesner, explains that it displays a portfolio of different environmental artists that have incorporated recycled trash into their art to raise awareness of environmental issues caused by municipal waste. Kalin claims that “
The information in this source is credible to my research since the author perfectly explains how natural art makes global issues more prominent by providing artworks that showcase different types of recyclable items being implemented into art. The information in this source is relevant to my topic since it perfectly displays artworks that use and upcycle plastic. Plastic is a huge contributor to pollution and the disruption of marine ecosystems, especially in Florida. The fact that one of the artworks in the source alludes to the idea that upcycling plastic bottles can contribute to helping sea life in many ways, allowing change to “spark”. The author, Kalin Glesner, was an undergraduate of the Humanities in 2020, the year this book was published, meaning she was properly educated in the forms of art and art history to understand how these environmental artists incorporated deeper messages of issues into their work. While this source is very credible, it lacks some currency since it was written almost 3 years. However, this source gives a complete, accurate list of artworks that show a variety of ways that trash can be upcycled into masterpieces that can raise awareness and “spotlight” specific environmental issues. This source can give me inspiration of what type of pieces I want to create and how to use them to raise awareness to different issues.
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