Students encountered an unusual animal on campus last week — a hippopotamus made of recycled plastic.

The hippo was part of a recycled plastic art exhibit at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry that was aimed at increasing awareness about plastic waste.

The exhibit was created after Sandra Ficula, a senior environmental studies major, got the idea for it when she participated in a waste audit last spring, she said. The audit, sponsored by Green Campus Initiative, revealed an unsettling amount of plastic waste on campus, she said.

‘There was a lot of recycling in the trash, and a lot of people weren’t sorting trash, even though this is an environmental school,’ said Ficula, a member of the initiative.

People are responsible for the amount of plastic waste, but the recycling systems across the country are also a large part of the problem, she said. Their infrastructures are inadequate and need to be re-evaluated, but that still might not help the problem, Ficula said.

‘I don’t really know what the solution is, though, because it takes a lot of energy to convert the recycled things to new products,’ Ficula said.

Ficula first developed her dislike of plastics after learning about the carcinogenic properties of Bisphenol A, which is used to make polycarbonate plastic, she said. She said her dislike grew further after learning about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a large area of the Pacific Ocean polluted by small pieces of plastic and sludge that have been dumped in the ocean from mostly land sources.

Adriana Beltrani, a senior environmental studies major who saw the exhibit, said she was surprised to hear about the cause of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

‘You’d think that because it’s in the ocean, it would come from the ocean off of barges,’ Beltrani said.

Beltrani said she thinks the exhibit was a good idea to bring awareness to the amount of plastic waste and the fact that it doesn’t decompose.

One of the pieces in the exhibit proved to be dangerous for its creator when a television, which was to serve as an ecosystem enclosure, exploded as it was being dismantled.

‘My contemporary art piece almost turned into a death agent,’ said John Summers, a senior conservation biology major who was temporarily blinded while trying to create his project.

Since recycling centers charge fees to process TVs, Summers said he and a friend decided to turn a TV into a biosphere, an enclosure that contains an ecosystem, complete with soil and plants. The projects required them to remove the TV’s cathode ray tube, which helps create images on the screen, with an angle grinder. As they began to dismantle the TV, it exploded.

‘All I had was glass in my hand and chest,’ Summers said. ‘There’s no explanation as to why we didn’t have serious injuries.’

Summers said he will never try to dismantle a TV again, but the project was worth it because it allowed him to explore his creative side.

‘You can still have an original idea, not everyone has done something like this,’ Summers said. ‘I have almost no artistic bones in my body, but you can still create original works of art and feel good about it afterward.’

jlsiart@syr.edu

 

Published on November 14, 2010 at 12:00 pm