artist statement

Recycling is one of the best ways for you to have a positive visible impact on the world in which we live. Recycling is not only important to the environment, but it is important to all of us. The city of Tucson does not play an active role in recycling and this left our group wanting to see change starting at the community level. In order to see improvement, one must start at the community level, and then move further to the state level. There needs to be an act of change immediately in the city of Tucson. The amount of waste we create is increasing all the time. Make it your personal goal to see that your state not only stacks up, but surpasses other states in recycling trends.

We used photography as a means of raising awareness- we took pictures for those around us to become educated on the lack of recycling in the city of Tucson. Our plan is to open the eyes of those around us to view an unexplored world, understand new meanings to the impact of recycling.

Our choice of subject is centered on the experience of living in a big city that does not recycle. After photographing the city of Tucson we were initially left disappointed, the photos didn't seem to speak to us, or carry the message we wanted to portray to our audience. We then further looked at our images and realized by cropping our photos allowed us to focus in on the smaller picture. We wanted to form stories through our photographs that are not at first obvious. Our goal is to have our audience view our images and then created their own personal understanding of what this image means to them, and essentially what recycling means to them as a whole. We have chosen to present questions and statistics in order to get an individual to stop and consider his or her own contributions when it comes to the issue of recycling.

We chose to crop our photos because we want our viewers to focus on the issue at hand, and eliminate distractions. We want the photo to consume our viewers. By cropping the photos it can all for further interpretation of what the full image could have been.

This photo shows how we can reuse, reduce, and recycle. Did you know that nearly all of the plastic ever created still exists today? Wouldn't you rather see a plastic bottle being used as a planter instead of taking up space in a landfill?

-Alyssa Diton

-There are about 50 different types of plastic

-Sometimes your home recycling bin doesn't take plastic bottles, in that case deposit them at your local recycle bank

-Don't forget to clean your bottles before recycling them

-Taylor Medeiros

Isn't it sad that there has to be a job for one person to be assigned to collect and pick up recycle able goods, because our society is too lazy to dispose of them properly?

-Amanda Trejo

The photo represents how the Tucson community is not allowing us to recycle. We are limited here and it makes it so difficult to reuse recyclable items, the majority goes to waste. On the U of A's campus alone, only certain people are aloud access to recycle because the recycle bins are locked up. It is clear that the way our world is ran today it is crucial for all to recycle and

Tucson is not contributing in positive ways. Tucson's outlook on recycling is shown through this photograph, restricted and wasteful.

-Morgan Larson

I have always been told that a dollar bill used to go a long way back in the day. A lot of candy, soda, and maybe even some of your favorite flavored chips could all be bought with just one dollar. The dollar bill is made up of wood pulp that contains crane a brand of paper, cloth including cotton, silk, and linen. This special paper and cloth mixture is known as "rag". This particular combination of materials are all products that have been recycled. Where is your money?

-Taylor Medeiros

Hey world! Did you know that 38.2% of our total waste is from paper and paperboard?

I remember when I was a little girl, I used to help my Dad haul all of our collected newspapers to the neighborhood school every few months for a paper drive. I wonder why we don't see paper drives as much anymore.

No one is being stopped from allowing this tradition to come back. I think it would be great to carry on this tradition, recycle newspapers, raise some money for your school, organization, and help the environment in the process. Yesterday's news can soon be tomorrow's news.

-Taylor Medeiros