Making Art with Trashcrete
Written by Deaven Chung
Protecting the environment is an important mission. This is what has led me to volunteer and support various organizations in the area whose purpose is make it a priority to promote, educate, research, encourage, and to take action towards global sustainability. It was on a local news channel where we first learned about the Rosebud Continuum and saw Dr. Culhane demonstrating the different machinery for glass and plastic and other creations. While volunteering at the Roots and Shoots event, we were fortunate to see Rosebud’s table and discover they were having an upcoming open house event. We signed up and attended, and this is where my volunteer journey with Rosebud and working with Dr. Culhane began!
Student volunteer, Deaven, next to the Trashcrete Gopher Tortoise sculpture near the entrance of the Native Trail.
The idea of Trashcrete is to sequester plastic that cannot be easily recycled and use it as a building material where the plastic is encapsulated and cannot pollute the environment. We wanted to demonstrate how plastic could be made into plastic blocks and also mixed into cement to replace traditional materials. Dr. Culhane, myself and a few other USF students decided to build a tortoise using all the Trashcrete techniques.
The project started on February 1 st when I helped Dr. TH Culhane place a metal base where we wanted the sculpture to be. We chose to place it near the entrance so visitors would be able to see it when they came into the Rosebud property. We then proceeded to fill the base with old five-gallon water bottles filled with a mixture of finely ground up glass bottles and shredded plastic. A small amount of water was added to fill in the corners of the bottle. We also filled in the base with smaller plastic bottles filled with plastic wrappers and other non-recyclable plastic bags along with shredded plastic (that couldn’t be recycled otherwise). By making it compact with plastic, it made the bottle much denser and sturdier. Over the following months, we then switched to filling up grocery plastic bags with a mixture of sand, cement, and shredded plastic to make a flexible cement mix that could fit into the crevices. We repeated this process of placing bags and letting it harden until we had the right height for the shell of the tortoise. In addition to the body, we also added the legs and a head made of bags filled with Trashcrete.
In April we began to work on the outside of the tortoise, starting with adding a metal mesh and then plastering layers of Trashcrete mixture onto it. We applied several layers of Trashcrete followed by a final layer pure cement and sand to end with a smooth finish. Once everything had dried and hardened, we began the process of painting it. While we originally painted the tortoise light blue going for a less realistic look, we eventually decided to make it look more realistic and use a dark grey mixture instead. We then proceeded to detail the shell, painting it to look as realistic as possible by adding different colors. While we unfortunately didn’t measure the weight of plastic that was being used, just the base used well over 80 lbs. Additionally, the concrete mixture used on the outside of the tortoise also used a good amount of shredded plastic. This sculpture saved all of that plastic from ending up in landfills and turning into dangerous microplastics. Additionally, we also left a small opening under the tortoise, allowing the wildlife to cool off from the Florida heat. We are looking forward to creating more sculptures in the future here at Rosebud and hope to raise awareness for how easy it is to use Trashcrete for multi-uses.