Trash is a human invention. It is a concept that is foreign to the natural world, and a fairly modern one. Today’s complex materials and mass production have given way to products and packaging designed for single-use. These developments have made our lives more convenient and products more affordable, but most of the resulting waste isn’t accepted by public recycling systems and ends up as garbage.

Bringing awareness to this is key to helping us change the way we think about the world’s limited resources. Seeing garbage as something other than a useless problem is the first step to a less wasteful and more prosperous world. Keyword: seeing.

At TerraCycle, we are on a mission to eliminate the idea of waste and do this in a number of ways. Many of you may be familiar with our national recycling programs, our work integrating beach litter into bottles, or the new Loop initiative to move consumables into durable packages. But one of the more visual, easily understood representations of what we do is upcycle “trash” into useful objects, including art.

 

 

If you visit our offices around the world, you’ll see what I mean. Desks and tables made out of old doors, a Statue of Liberty made of toothpaste tubes, and phone booths repurposed into mini conference rooms. Our largest, the aptly named “Bottle Room,” exists in the middle of our global headquarters and is defined by four walls constructed of clear two-liter plastic bottles, items often thrown away.

 

 

We have an entire team of Design Junkies dedicated to finding solutions for needs around the office and creating new, visually stimulating artworks and products for brand partners. We also work directly with local and international artists to provide material they can use to create art

For example, TerraCycle’s Artist in Residence EdE Sinkovics, turns trash into statements about waste by creating assemblages out of discarded materials, such as cigarette butts into portraits of presidents (Lincoln, The Sustainable Republican, 2018), retired canvas mail bags and old tires into sculptures (Rhino Stamp, 2014; Elephant, 2014), and wine corks into human figures (Madam Cork, 2014).

 

 

His latest work, The Dirt of Venus, reimagines Botticelli’s famous Renaissance painting, The Birth of Venus. A conversation starter, Venus bears vibrant resemblance to its inspiration while entirely made of trash — ocean plastic, to be exact. These artworks face the viewer with uncomfortable truths. Even the most difficult-to-recycle materials can in fact be made into something useful, even beautiful. And, there’s a lot of plastic pollution out there!

These art pieces currently hang in the special art exhibit Scrapped: A Collection of Upcycled Artwork, our first show in partnership with Downtown Trenton Association at Broad Street Bank Gallery open through April 13. The collection, which includes on-site installations and mixed media pieces of varying styles, also includes on-site installations from acclaimed aerosol artist and friend of TerraCycle Leon Rainbow and Brendon Lopez (Streets Keep Callin, 2019), reclaimed textiles artist Heemin Moonin in collaboration with Dororthy McNee (Green Palace, 2019), and TerraCycle employees.

 

 

Scrapped is in line with our mission to change perspectives and connect people through shared experiences. All the featured art utilizes discarded and otherwise “scrapped” materials. Designed to encourage viewers to question their day-to-day lifestyle and their impact on the planet, the upcycled art show transforms garbage into artistic visions that connect the dots between us and the things we throw away.

This exhibit will be back next year, but we intend to continue changing perspectives with our work upcycling and recycling unconventional materials and striving to offer the public a connection to sustainability that empowers and inspires them.

 

 

Creativity and community hold the key to solving the world’s greatest problems, including pollution and waste, and art is a language that brings people together. This Earth Month and beyond, find the educational information, media, music and art that moves you, and share it to change the story about trash.