Got junk? 'Upcycle' it by creating art or other objects

America Recycles is an event that cities and communities participate in country wide on or around Nov. 15. This initiative was set forth by Keep America Beautiful and the local Keep Kimball Beautiful Group can be counted on for participation this coming November.

America Recycles is designed to raise awareness in communities about how recycling can be a big help to the environment and how communities can recycle more. Showing people how easy it is to be an active recycler is an easy way to get more involved.

While all the activities for the event have yet to be set in stone, one thing that Keep Kimball Beautiful Director, Larissa Binod has shared is the attention that will be drawn to "up-cycling."

Up-cycling is a way to use recyclable materials again, often by creating art or turning recycled material into more useful objects.

There are several different ways to up-cycle and many of those ways can be pretty exciting and creative. Some things that people have done are turn soup cans and other metals and glass items into light fixtures. For the less electrically inclined, there are things like T-shirt rugs and creating throw pillows out of old sweaters. Anything can be up-cycled or repurposed. Clothing can even be made out of recycled materials.

"Last year we had some dresses that were made by a few ladies," Binod said.

This year children at Mary Lynch Elementary School, as well as the high school, will be making up-cycled creations for Keep America Beautiful.

The Elementary Eco-Club will be making armor out of recycled materials, according to Binod. The high schoolers are doing something a bit more advanced that requires some team work.

Pat Sulu, the Kimball High School Spanish teacher, has gotten her Spanish Club involved in making metal sculptures out of recyclable metals.

"I have noticed a lot of communities have some metal sculptures on display to sort of make things look interesting and the kids got excited about doing something like that. So we thought of making sculptures out of recyclable metals," Sulu said.

Making sculptures out of metal entails a little more than just designing the sculpture. The metal needs to be welded together in order to give the structure integrity.

"We have also gotten the ag (agriculture) students involved. They will be working with us, we'll hot glue the sculptures together to get the over all idea and then the ag students will weld it for us," Sulu said.

This team effort between students is something that echoes the ideals of recycling, which include community effort to improve.

Currently, the students have had quite a few people recycle and donate large pieces of metal for the project. However, Sulu has expressed their need for smaller metal items.

"Right now we have had some pretty large metal items given to us and we do have some students working on larger sculptures, but we want to be able to make smaller ones as well. So smaller scraps would be ideal at this point," Sulu said.

The students are not the only members of the community that can get involved with this up cycling for Keep America Beautiful.

Binod wants to encourage all members of the community to try their hand at up cycling and salvage art. With just less than a month until Kimball's America Recycles celebration Binod thinks that a lot of creative things could be generated through the community.

"Anyone is welcome to participate. The high school's sculptures will be on display at America Recycles Day as well as at our business after hours event," Binod said.

Keep Kimball Beautiful's America Recycles event will be held Nov. 14. If anyone has any questions about the event or how to get involved they should contact Keep Kimball Beautiful at 235-3202.