Kara Brems | brems@hope.edu | Dance

Dearest Hope Faculty and Staff,

Do you have plastic trash at home that you don’t know what to do with? Plastic pieces that are not recyclable, but which you hate to throw away, knowing they will make their way into a landfill? We have a solution!

We are hoping you can help us with a collaborative project that centers on the challenges of plastic pollution, particularly in our Michigan waterways. Lisa Walcott’s sculpture students will be creating sculptures made of collected plastics, which will be displayed as part of the scenery for Kara Brems’ dance piece this spring in the Dance 49 faculty Dance Concert. We are partnering with the Office of Sustainability and also getting help from Dining Services and Physical Plant to organize a “plastic drive” on campus. In order to make this happen, we would love for you to donate your own clean plastics from home in the designated bins, which will be placed in the lobby of DePree from 9/16-9/30.

We will accept all plastics but would like to particularly focus on plastics that can not otherwise be recycled curbside (even if they have a recycling number on them). All donated items MUST be clean and free of any food particles. Below is a list of suggested items:

  • plastic bags of all types
  • plastic envelopes (like the kind your amazon purchases come in)
  • blister packaging
  • berry containers
  • styrofoam
  • plastic straws, plates, or flatware
  • film packaging (like the plastic that nearly everything you buy comes wrapped in – toothpaste containers, produce, pens, etc…)
  • bulky plastics such as 5-gallon buckets, broken lawn furniture, laundry baskets, milk crates, plastic toys or household items that are broken or not usable

Note: If any items are too big to fit into the provided bins, please talk with the student at the front desk or Nicole in the front office about an appropriate location to put these.

Thank you in advance for your help! We hope to post photos of the process and update you on how the sculptures turn out!

Best,

Kara Brems, Lisa Walcott, and the Office of Sustainability