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MCCTC students fashion wearable trash for annual recycling event
By Sean Barron
CANFIELD
Nearly everyone who buys or subscribes to The Vindicator reads the newspaper, though Ju’Kwala Lee found another use: She shredded and wore it to make an angelic fashion statement.
“My designer thought it up, and I went with it,” the 12th-grade student said, referring to the angel outfit she wore over her clothing for a fashion show at the Mahoning County Career & Technical Center, 7300 N. Palmyra Road.
Lee was among about 15 students who took part in the festivities, which were the main attraction of the school’s Trash Bash 2014 on Friday.
MCCTC’s Interactive Multimedia program hosted the event, which also was in partnership with the Mahoning County Green Team.
The Trash Bash gathering, in its seventh year, challenged the juniors and seniors to work as individuals or in teams to develop fashions from common items that normally get thrown away. The emphasis was on the importance of reducing, recycling and reusing waste, noted Melissa Hackett, the multimedia program’s teacher.
Also assisting with the effort was Hackett’s teaching partner, Mary Ann Thoburn.
Lee and her designer, fellow student Gwen Jacobs, took about 10 days to glue and add lace to trash bags Lee wore that were complemented with shredded newspaper resembling a skirt. The angel wings, made of thick wire and tissue paper, took one day to complete, Lee said.
Some people wear their emotions on their sleeves, but senior Linsy Shively wore her workplace all over her body.
“My outfit is kind of poofy and is folded like an accordion,” Shively said about the intricately bent, stapled and glued food wrappers from a Subway sandwich shop, where she works part time.
The top portion of her fashion consisted of roughly 50 bright-yellow Subway gift cards.
The idea was conceived about four months ago, and Shively’s manager gave her a box of wrappers for the project, she recalled.
Also in keeping with a fast-food theme was 12th-grader Krystina Reyder, who works part time at a Wendy’s restaurant in Poland and took one day to use about 75 pieces of wrapping paper for her outfit.
Shively’s idea also served as inspiration for hers, Reyder explained, saying that she tries to recycle as much as possible.
“Eventually, everything makes a big impact on the environment,” she added.
Hackett said she also was pleased with the creativity behind the others’ fashions, which included cupcake tins with colored buttons, a dress made mainly from packaging material and a shirt filled with soda-bottle tops. One student was covered from head to toe with interwoven pages from word-search-puzzle books.
Also happy with the teens’ efforts was Kim Lewis, the Green Team’s environmental educator.
“We’re teaching the students that we need to rescue our resources,” Lewis said, adding that her agency also provided recycling bins for the career center. “At the Green Team, we’re fond of saying, ‘Every day is Earth Day.’”