As Free Plastic closes out our second year, it seems fitting to be working on a project to remind vehicles picking up students at MAST Academy on Virginia Key that there is NO IDLING.
We thought year two was going to be a breakout year for Free Plastic, and then the pandemic hit. Just like the rest of the world, everything went virtual; events became Zoom calls; community cleanups became individual cleanups; and at times, even individual cleanups got cancelled. Then, we realized that even with the pandemic, there was to be no idling.
We began the pandemic by going virtual for the 2020 O, Miami Poetry Festival. We led an Earth Day Zoom workshop where we taught our participants about the reality of recycling in South Florida as well as a demonstration of how we recycle ocean and community plastics. During the 90-minute workshop, we also recycled 785 grams (1.7 pounds!) of polypropylene from local beaches, families, and friends. Participants wrote original nature-inspired poems under the instruction of local poet Caroline Cabrera for inclusion in our upcoming text-based works.
Like many individuals during the pandemic, we were on lockdown. Having diminished access to our shared workspace, we developed a new strategy to work wherever circumstances would find us. With support from Light Made Liquid, LLC, we were able to secure our first cargo trailer and outfit it with everything we need to recycle locally, to recycle in-person, and to recycle anywhere with an available power outlet. The future is positively electric—and mobile.
Across the board, corporate and institutional partnerships were integral in making our work possible this year. We’re proud of what we accomplished and prouder still that we get to share all of our successes with awesome partners and supporters like the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. Best of all, we get to share these successes with you. Check out some of our other accomplishments of our second year below!
Mobile Recycling Laboratory
Our mobile recycling unit is currently equipped with a shredder, an injector, electrical, lighting, a workbench, and shelving for all of our tools, molds, and shredded plastic. We also have plans to add custom cabinetry, overhead storage, a bottle jack press, oven, and an extruder. Our plan is to have these additions completed by the end of 2021.
Lessons Learned
Fine tuning the injection process was by far the hardest part of 2020. We destroyed numerous heating elements, injected many incomplete tiles and letters, and even broke & rebuilt the injector frame. But, we repaired, we updated, and we plowed through to make hundreds of tiles and letters from 100% recycled polypropylene and polyethylene.
The Children’s Trust Trophies
We worked with The Children’s Trust Youth Advisory Committee to create trophies for high school students participating in their youth leadership program which nurtures the next generation of change-makers committed to positive change in themselves, their communities, and the world. These 16 trophies for the Youth Advisory Committee contain a total of 1,104 grams of unrecyclable plastics farmed from South Florida communities & coastlines.
First Annual Free Plastic Plastic Free Ocean Awards
The First Annual Free Plastic Plastic Free Ocean Awards were a hit! The World’s Best Party Cup award went to the amazing Pirani Life. And of course, you all know who won the World’s Trashiest Farmer award. It’s the plastic farmer we all know and love, the tireless beach cleaner extraordinaire, Desiree DiClemente DiSalvo at Sun of a Beach Cleanup!! Stay tuned for the 2021 awards. See the awards here.
Birch Veneer Nameplates
Also, new this year is our own trophy nameplates! Instead of printing nameplates on new/virgin plastics from a trophy shop or engraver, we made our plates using just ink and birch veneer.
The Hive
We made a new wall art piece called The Hive. A commissioned piece, The Hive represents one of our first collaborations for a new wall art product, and is inspired by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. It consists of 19 tiles mounted on a 1/2″ painted panel. Each tile is made of an average of 57 grams of recycled polypropylene, making the entire piece over 1 kilogram of recycled ocean and community plastics—1,083 grams to be exact.
Lazy Rivers
The holidays were buzzing again with the sound of our router carving out a new batch of Lazy Rivers—our take on the classic lazy susan. Our Lazy Rivers are made from birch with unique rivers carved into them, and an average of 35 grams of unrecyclable plastics floating through. See the latest Lazy River drop on Instagram.
Plastic Poetry 001
In collaboration with O, Miami—again(!)—Miami Norland Senior High School hosted us for two days of workshops that taught their students about recycling in South Florida, and how we transformed one of their poems into a public art piece that was later installed on campus. This first installation of Plastic Poetry was of a poem written in a collaborative writing workshop with the school’s students. The five-inch tall polypropylene letters were rendered in 7.8 pounds of recycled post-consumer plastic and plastic pollution harvested from a community cleanup held at the school on March 26, 2021. Plastic Poetry was made possible with support from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. Check out Plastic Poetry 001.
Plastic Poetry 002
Our second Plastic Poetry piece was installed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center on Key Biscayne. Plastic Poetry 002 visualized an excerpt from Cherry Pickman’s poem “Tropical Disturbance”. The five-inch tall polypropylene letters were rendered in 6.2 pounds of recycled post-consumer plastic and plastic pollution harvested from a beach cleanup held at the Nature Center on February 18, 2021. Check out Plastic Poetry 002.
Community & Beach Cleanups
With the launch of the Plastic Poetry series came a series of community cleanups. Due to the pandemic, these events were small with a cap on how many volunteers could participate. Our Earth Day 2021 cleanup of Bill Baggs – Cape Florida State Park beach was sponsored by the 2021 O, Miami Poetry Festival and retailer/lifestyle brand KITH. To date, we have held three official community cleanups where we collected over 100 lbs of pollution. Once sorted, we were able to reclaim 45 lbs of plastic and have successfully recycled roughly 14 lbs of that plastic into poems. As the pandemic wanes, expect more cleanups as well as some live, on-location recycling.
Stools
Partnering with artists and craftspeople to push recycling into new realms is the heart of our organization, and in our second year, we partnered with a local furniture maker (hi dad!) to make stools for his grandkids (hi nephews!)! He took care of the bases which were made from various scrap and reclaimed hardwoods, and we poured the top. Each top had over 50 grams of unrecyclable plastics and included a hand grip for portability. See one of our stools on Instagram.
So, what will Year 3 look like?
We hope to have more cleanups with MORE participants, partners, collected pollution, and reclaimed/recycled plastics. We are also continuing our work with O, Miami Poetry Festival and hope to install many more poems throughout Miami-Dade County.
Our mobile unit should be hitting the streets by the end of 2021 and will be fully equipped with a shredder, an injector, an extruder, a press, and all of the tools/equipment needed to build upcycled products from the pollution we collect. We also have a few (secret!) collaborations in the works with some amazing artists to help us process more of our plastics into usable works of art, as well as recycle our own production waste into new wall art. There’s a few more projects in the works too, but you will just have to stay tuned to find out about those.
And finally, our numbers. As we wrap up the first phase of development for our infrastructure and begin to work more on recycling and less on construction, the quantity of plastic recycling has begun to rise. During our first year, we successfully recycled just shy of 10 pounds of plastics. Year Two, we recycled over 30 pounds of plastic!
That brings us to a total of 43.7 pounds of recycled plastics. And, as the world begins to open up again, we are excited to see how much we can recycle in year three.
Free Plastic is a Florida Nonprofit Corporation and a fiscal sponsorship fund operating under the Key Biscayne Community Foundation’s 501(c)(3) charitable umbrella. The products we create and sell help keep us afloat, however it is through the generous donations from our community members and supporters that allow us to make an impact in our local community. If you would like to support our mission, please make a donation via PayPal.