Earth Day 2025 Noyo Food Forest
photo by R. Innis
Friends and family pitched in to make Earth Day 2025 a big success for Upcycle Directory by Phoenix. The producers of our local Earth Day event supported the vision to spread the word about upcycled goods and merchandise offered for sale all over the planet. They said we could promote upcycledirectory.com. They also asked if we could host an upcycling activity for the whole family.
We used upcycled materials to create a whimsical coral reef. Upcycled materials included last year’s holiday wrapping paper and calendars, outdated maps, paper towel rolls, clean cardboard of multi-colors from food products, and more. We used scissors to cut out cardboard sea creatures and decorated them with the paper and homemade flour glue,, stickers from junk mail, and glitter.
The upcycled coral reef project was a hit for all ages. We saw some amazingly talented young artists and some adults who got in touch with their inner child. The takeaway was that we don’t need to go out and buy art supplies when they are readily available in our garbage.
While we made upcycled art, we were able to have important discussions about how upcycling can help the environment and about how to use upcycledirectory.com to find all types of upcycled goods and mercantile. We heard feedback that ranged from people saying they want to be done with accumulating stuff altogether to people who remember glass soda bottles that have all been replaced with plastic, to people looking for a way to upcycle old wetsuits.
I would like to thank everyone who participated in the event for all of their hard work. We had people who hooked up electronics, hauled all of the furniture and equipment, decorated the booth, contributed their time to helping with the upcycled cardboard and paper coral reef art project,, helped with taking down the booth and loading it back into vehicles at the end of the day, and finally, putting it all away. Thank you for making it possible. Thank you to everyone who came out to enjoy the beautiful day. Thank you for the hopeful and thoughtful discussions. I hope the upcycling buzz catches on!
