Quazen

Upcycling is the concept of taking something of little value (such as an empty pill bottle) and increasing its value exponentially through artistic expression (see the pill bottle sculpture below). Jean Shin is one of the extraordinarily talented artists who’s view of what is trash and what is treasure takes her on an artistic journey that is beautiful to follow.

How does society view the object that it throws away in comparison to the object it treasures? Upcycling is changing people’s minds and hearts when they stop to reconsider what is “garbage”.

This is the sixth article in my “Artistic Recycling” series, which highlights creative ways to reuse what most people would throw away and transform it into objects of great value. This article features paper dresses of Susan Stockwell.

This is my fifth article on artistic recycling. These articles all involve making something worthless into something priceless. It takes a lot of skill to take our cast-offs and see them from a different angle — on of an artistic medium. Thinking what can be made of this instead of how can I get rid of this. In this article, I highlight an artist named John T. Unger and his incredible uses of scrap metal.

About 23% of plastic water bottles are recycled. This leaves an astounding 38 billion water bottles in landfills. It takes over 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture a year’s supply of bottled water. That’s enough to fuel 100,00 cars for a year. The popularity of recycling, reducing, and reusing has increased in recent years. These methods can help to reduce the amount of wasted oil and landfill space.