The Art of Trash
By Anjali Haripriyan
Everyday household items made out of repurposed materials.
“We make flower pots out of clamshells and different materials, we make recycling bins out of plastic bottles, we make jump ropes out of plastic bags, pillows out of donated fabric and scraps...pretty much anything you can think of, we’ll go for it”.
“We make flower pots out of clamshells and different materials, we make recycling bins out of plastic bottles, we make jump ropes out of plastic bags, pillows out of donated fabric and scraps...pretty much anything you can think of, we’ll go for it”.
While running between work and supervising a youth group, Laura Kutner picked up the phone and spoke with great enthusiasm about her passion for preserving the environment. Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, she founded the Portland based non-profit organization called Trash for Peace, which strives to educate people around the city about how to reuse trash that would otherwise be dumped in the landfill. She emphasized that too many people are unaware of how much trash is carelessly thrown away and taken to our oceans.
Laura’s passion for reusing trash started during her time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Granados, Guatemala.
While she was there to help create a youth development program to improve rural school curriculums, Laura noticed that one of the schools she worked in was in desperate need of new classrooms. She proposed using plastic bottles to build the walls of the classrooms, an idea she had previously heard about through an organization called Pura Vida Atitlan. Seeing great potential in this idea, the residents of Granados agreed and the Peace Corps volunteers began modifying Pura Vida Atitlan’s manual for building sustainable walls.
Laura brought together hundreds of people to collect more than 4,000 used plastic drink bottles from ditches, gutters, and trash piles. Students, volunteers, and school staff around the city of Granados started stuffing more than 6,000 bottles full of plastic bags to provide insulation for the classrooms. A number of hands helped to stuff as many as 250 plastic bags into each bottle. The volunteers stacked the bottles, bound them with chicken wire, and coated them with a cement-sand mix.
The amount of plastic bottles and cans the volunteers found for building the classrooms made Laura realize the need for more environmental awareness around the globe, but more specifically, back in the U.S. She pointed out the differences between her home in Portland, Oregon and Guatemala. “Living in a very small village, I had to burn all my trash so I had a completely different relationship with trash than I had here. It didn’t just disappear so I had to deal with it everyday”. Laura pointed out that in the U.S. trash seems to vanish due to the number of trash cans conveniently sitting around. She realized that because Guatemalans are more impoverished than most Americans, they subsequently use less and waste less. Their cultural norm of reusing stems from their need to use every last bit of whatever they have, including finding practical use out of old cans or artistic use out of plastic bags.
However, while there is much more consciousness in Guatemala to reuse and reduce, they still had an abundant amount of trash. Laura came to understand this more clearly when the Tropical Storm Agatha hit Guatemala and flooded homes.
During the flooding, thousands of plastic bottles were dragged by the river into the towns. “All that plastic originated in the U.S. and that was eye opening” Laura said. “Like, okay, not only is this plastic awful but it’s from here [the United States]! We set the trend. Before, all the drinks in Guatemala were out of glass and now everyone’s moving to plastic and there’s no way to reuse it...”. By marketing soda companies and other enterprises to other countries, the U.S. has significantly shifted countries like Guatemala to using more plastic, something Laura has seen first hand.
When Laura returned to the U.S., she saw that people simply did not understand how to deal with trash, and wanted to share the knowledge she had learned in Guatemala through hands-on experiences such as art and crafts. She wanted to create something that would be accessible and fun for people around Portland, and thus decided to create a non-profit. Laura began building her organization with a small volunteer based board, with zero startup funds, and kickstarted the organization with the last 2000 dollars from her readjustment allowance from Peace Corps (a payment authorized to assist volunteers in their transition from Peace Corps to other endeavors
As she developed her organization, she realized the need for a tight knit system of people willing to support the issue in order to create change regarding environmental sustainability. This sense of community was a crucial part of how she created change in Guatemala: “When I first got there, it was really difficult for me, and then when I started building trust and relationships with the community, I became a part of the community. And then my experiences in the projects we did soared because I had that trust.” Laura was adamant on making Trash for Peace a hands-on organization, as she strongly believes that hands-on experiences bring the community together.
To integrate this idea into their organization, the Trash for Peace non-profit created an activity book with various trash friendly activities and art recipes. From making recycling bins out of plastic bottles to creating games out of repurposed materials, the organization educates people of all ages with creative ways on how to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Though organizations like Trash for Peace are working to improve our society’s mindset, Laura says that the change will not happen immediately. “I think in the U.S. we tend to be very individualistic. We tend to be very impatient and want things to be accomplished very quickly and expect our results to be immediate, and that’s often the least sustainable way to function”. Creating change is a slow process, but Laura continues to find ways to make something that impacts our environment in such a negative way into beautiful and sustainable forms of art.
