Artists' vow: Leave no plastic behind

A month’s worth of milk jugs, coffee lids become a statement

By DAWN Weinberger

Pamplin Media Group, Jun 12, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

Shopping bags take a turn for fashion in a “P-Couture” shirt designed by Grace Espiritu for a current art exhibit focused on plastics.

SARAH TOOR / PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP

Cheryl Lohrmann saves practically every piece of plastic she uses. Clamshell takeout boxes. Bubble-tea straws. Coffee lids. Bubble wrap. Even potato chip bags.

But Lohrmann doesn’t like plastic. Her “collection” is all about education – specifically, helping people understand the facts about plastic recycling and the dangers of haphazardly tossing plastic into the trash can.

“When I met Cheryl a year ago, one of the first things I (learned) about her is that she was a plastic hater,” her friend and co-worker Jessica Lyness says. Both work at the Northwest Film Center in downtown Portland, Lyness in public relations and Lohrmann as the office manager.

An aspiring filmmaker, Lohrmann says her aversion to plastic began after she read “Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash,” by Elizabeth Royte, which chronicles the author’s quest to find out where her own garbage goes once it leaves her home.

“It was really stupefying,” Lohrmann says of the book.

Reading “Garbage Land” inspired Lohrmann to write a narrative screenplay about the environmental impact of excessive plastic use. The screenplay didn’t turn out as she had hoped, so she switched gears.

“After several months of writing and rewriting, an art exhibition involving a community of conscientious individuals seemed a much better application,” Lohrmann writes in what she refers to as her pre-project statement.

She dubbed the project Leave No Plastic Behind, and assembled a team of eight other like-minded women, including Lyness, to give her a hand.

They all agreed to save every piece of noncurbside recyclable plastic for a period of three months. Their individual stashes were then transformed from mere waste into works of art.

The collection is on display through June at the Madrona Hill Cafe (5937 N. Greeley Ave., 503-289-7617). Pieces range from a diorama depicting a tiny city to an entire human skeleton constructed out of polyethylene milk jugs, appropriately called “Bones.”

Through this project, they hope to make a dent in the tons of plastic that accumulates in area landfills each year. In 2005 alone, Portland-area residents generated 38,000 tons of plastic waste. Only 48 percent of that plastic was recycled, says Judie Miller, a supervisor for Metro Recycling Information (the rest wound up in the landfill).

“It looks like we’re throwing away more than we’re recycling,” Miller says.

Plastic’s hard to avoid

Though the Leave No Plastic Behind participants already were conscientious about recycling, involvement in the project took their awareness to new heights, Lohrmann says.

“If you let (plastic) accumulate … where you can see it, and you can see the numbers rising and you can watch it taking over your space,” she says. “I think bringing the reality of waste into your personal space really changes the way you look at it.”

Vicky DeKrey, creator of “Bones” (along with a corresponding piece called “Skin,” made with polyethylene bags), had the same realization as the project progressed.

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