Recycling Sculpture & Zine
Spring 2022
For the Olin course Sustainability: Science, Society, and Systems (“4S”), I worked on a team with two other students to build a sculpture and make a zine about recycling. The sculpture consisted of three plywood arrows in the shape of the recycling symbol, each with a quote from a research paper we read for a class assignment. One arrow was covered in recyclable plastics and read, “Only 9% of plastics ever produced have been recycled.” Another was covered in non-recyclable plastics and read, “79% of all plastics produced have accumulated in the environment.” The third arrow was stained with oil and read, “368 million metric tons of virgin plastics are produced annually.”
The first page of our zine, as well as a description of each part of the sculpture.
The project was inspired by a talk that Gretchen Carey, the President of the Board of Directors at Mass Recycle, gave to our class. The talk made the three of us realize that although we thought we knew what was recyclable and what wasn’t, we actually had many misconceptions and confusions around it. We were inspired to create a sculpture that could serve as an entry point to teaching others what we’d learned, and to create a zine that people interacting with the sculpture could read to learn more.
Presentation day in our class—one of our professors stands in the middle of our sculpture, which we set up in the classroom the night before.
The Concept
We began our project by researching existing projects, ranging from art installations to interactive museum exhibits. We brainstormed several different ideas, but eventually landed on what would become our sculpture by thinking through every aspect of the experience.
A snapshot of our Miro board, where we collected design inspirations and ideas
First, we wanted interacting with the sculpture to be contemplative—for people to think about it carefully and apply it to their own lives. While we felt that many of the examples of large sculpture we found online were interesting to look at, we didn’t feel like they prompted the same level of analysis we wanted our sculpture to. On the other hand, we felt that more interactive activities (such as a game following the journey of plastic through the recycling stream) might be less contemplative than we wanted—they gave a good understanding of where exactly plastic goes, but didn’t prompt as much reflection as the static sculptures.
Our first real-scale concept sketch. We were happy with the size, even though this was also the point at which we realized it wouldn’t fit into a hallway.
We were able to find a balance between these factors by designing the sculpture to operate differently at different scales. From afar, people could recognize it as the recycling symbol, but would be unable to decipher the differences between each arrow, which would prompt them to come closer. At this second scale, viewers could see the different objects attached to each arrow, but would be unable to read the text going around the sculpture. To do that, they would have to step inside the arrows and walk around them in a circle. The act of walking itself prompts contemplation, but we found that the act of stepping inside the sculpture prompted a distinct mindset shift in viewers, as they were literally changing their perspective from being outside the system to being a part of it.
Something that we felt limited by with the sculpture, however, was the amount of information we could fit in it. Instead of crowding our research into the arrows, we decided to make a zine, that could present the information in more detail and serve as another way to engage with the sculpture.
The Design
We had two components of the project to build: the sculpture, and the zine.
We decided to make the base of the sculpture out of plywood, so that it would be sturdy enough to serve as a base for our materials, but light enough to be moved or stacked against a wall (a necessity for a sculpture without a designated living space on an already-crowded campus). Meagan created a cut sheet and led us in assembly. We attached the sections of plywood together by screwing them into 2’x4’s, which also raised the sculpture slightly off the ground, protecting it from damage and making it easier to move.
Meanwhile, we started creating a style guide for our zine. We wanted it to look and feel like a vintage advertisement, ironically echoing the visual language that was used to promote large amounts of plastic production when plastics were first being widely adopted. Inspired by this, Reid created a small cast of cartoon characters who would live in the margins of the zine.
A Miro board snapshot showing visual inspirations and early sketches for our zine.
One of the three wooden bases for our sculpture—upside-down in this photo.
With a color palette and fonts picked out, we were ready to start making our zine.
Dumpster Diving
With the base of our sculpture built, our next step was to gather the materials that would go on top of it. Gretchen Carey, whose talk inspired our project, was able to put us in contact with Waneta Trabert, the Sustainable Materials Management Director of the City of Newton. We met her at Newton’s recycling collection site, and—with her blessing—started hunting for materials.
For one of our arrows, we wanted only recyclable plastic, and for another, non-recyclable plastic. Luckily for us, the plastic the recycling site received was already divided into these two categories. You can see where we gathered our recyclable plastic below, and the much larger non-recyclable dumpsters on the left. (Unfortunately, we left the bumblebee umbrella behind.)
Assembly
We picked out the three quotes we wanted on the arrows—statistics from a paper we read about plastic pollution—and cut them out in vinyl stickers. We then began the process of gluing down all of our gathered plastic (after we cleaned it, of course), and for the third arrow, stained it using oil from Meagan’s car, which serendipitously needed an oil change anyway.
Certain kinds of plastic don’t play well with glue, even with a high-strength adhesive. After transporting the sculpture up the stairs to our classroom, several pieces of plastic had to be reattached to the sculpture using screws.
Creating the Zine
After conducting our research, we drafted the text we wanted in each section of our zine in a shared google doc, then planned out a draft of what we wanted on each page in our Miro board (zines have to have a multiple of four pages, or else they won’t print properly). For the cover of the zine and a few other pages, we made multiple versions of the design before settling on what we wanted.
