Transforming Trash into Art on Earth Day - Meaningful Fun for the Family

Our kids creating Earth Day recycled art.

Another year, another Earth Day. As I wrote in a recent article in Yes! Magazine, we can’t just turn on caring one day out of each year; it’s critical that we find ways to help each other stay consistently committed to taking care of our earth. Even small efforts count.

There is tremendous power in where we place our collective attention. The more that we share what we do, the more it will ripple through our communities. We humans are influenced by our peers. Think of it as peer pressure for good.

So, in that spirit…

This Earth Day, I organized with another mom for our families to clean-up a beach in the Richmond Marina (Calif). I’d noticed a lot of plastic and litter along the shore when I was staying in that area recently. We picked up quite a lot of plastic bits and pieces, including: bottle caps, candy wrappers, plastic film, styrofoam, straws, dog collars, you name it.

We separated some of the trash for art-making — there was much more!

While collecting litter, I thought about a recent article in the New York Times re: how micro plastics are ubiquitous, and have infiltrated our bodies and are affecting us in ways we don’t yet understand. When you see so much plastic waste (of which I saw a teeny amount really), you start to question why? WHY do we use so much wasteful single-use plastic? But, seriously, you use an item one time…like shampoo or bubbles or a take out box…and then it inhabits space on earth for hundreds of years….Often finding its way into our beautiful oceans.

What if we minimize such usage when we can? Buy glass instead of plastic when we can, or refill in bulk, use metal straws, or make homemade products (like laundry detergent or fabric cleaner)? Those are also fun science projects to do with your kids.

Next, both kids and grown ups created eco-art using our found materials, and paint and glue on repurposed wood boards. It was a deeply satisfying, fun way to cross-generationally come together, and connect with / steward our ailing more-than-human-world. Anyone can do this, anytime, anywhere. It feels good, and it’s meaningful work. I think we’ll do it again next year… and invite more people! (But, in the meantime…there is plenty more to do).

My daughter called this art piece “The Garbage Exposal.” Brilliance in that (not just ‘cos I’m a parent!), as it plays off the words “expose,” “disposal,” and “expos(AY)”

She called this one: “Anything That’s Garbage Can Always Be Made Into Art.” True enough!

Here I am with artist Patricia “Trix” Adler.