EXPERIENCING A LOT OF FRUSTRATION WITH THE COMMUNITY'S LACK OF ATTENTION TO RECYCLING, I CREATED THIS SERIES TO SHOWCASE WAYS TO UTILIZE RECYCLABLE AND LANDFILL MATERIALS IN ARTWORK. INFORMATION PLACARDS WERE DIRECT.

Our planet is going to be Wall-E meets Interstellar soon and we are on the brink of our 6th mass extinction thanks to human activity. I travel a lot and see the effects of climate change in different communities, most dramatically affected has been our coastal states. Because of these observations and wanting to keep our planet healthy, I try to encourage others to make choices that positively affect our planet by modeling behavior and through my artwork. 

These art pieces were created using recyclable materials collected from personal use and from the front desk department. I collect recyclable and landfill items to utilize in my artwork as a way to reuse these items and to demonstrate to others the amount of waste created by one individual. Please reflect on what your waste production looks like and ways you can limit that by your purchasing choices, recycling practices, eating habits, and more.

If you weren’t aware, we do not recycle plastic and paper at the lodge. Both of these recyclable items wind up in our landfills which contributes to negative impacts on nature, wildlife, and humans. 

Previous staff members were not properly preparing recycling here and we were being charged for dump/waste fees which led to management deciding to discontinue recycling of plastic.

The proper way to prep plastic recycling is to remove bottle caps and to rinse out the plastic ensuring that no food or other waste remains in the plastic. Consider that the purpose of recycling is to make new things and sending in dirty plastic items is not appropriate for the health and safety of community members. If we as a team begin practicing appropriate plastic recycling, management may reinstate it.

Please think before you purchase items bound in plastic while living/working here, it will just go into the trash and then into our landfills which then has a detrimental death cycle of its own: plastic does not decompose and throughout the years the sun’s radiation breaks it down into microplastics that get into our water sources harming both humans and animals. For sea creatures, the consumption of microplastics leads to death by starvation as they cannot digest food. Microplastics have even been discovered in our rainwater.