The Plastic Footprint Project

Raising awareness through collaborative art projects

Check out this amazing community art project! A group of teenagers wanted to raise awareness about the problems with single-use plastics in our environment by creating a sculpture. We decided on a giant foot of plastic water bottles stepping on the Earth, leaving a huge footprint. At the local Farmer’s Market we invited other community members to join us.

A group of 3rd graders wanted to join the fun and work on the art project too! Together, we gathered used water bottles, cleaned them, separated the caps, and attached wires to a thousand bottles. Art projects are so much fun when working with friends and community!

Our students and community members worked hard on the armature of the huge foot and footprint. With help from locals who knew how to weld, we constructed a base to attach our recycled shrink-wrap and plastic bottles. This art project brought community members of all ages out to help!

Next, we worked on the Earth. In art-making, sometimes you have to do things more than once to get it right. Our young artists worked on 3 spheres for the Earth before we got the correct size and shape. When in the middle of an art project you never give up!

Now, we’re ready to add all those bottles we’ve been collecting! Our community had the opportunity to help whenever they could and many came after work. We also brought the armature down to the beach one day! There, our art project really got some attention and everyone wanted to pitch in! We even had 2 different news stations come report on our project!

Bottles, bottles, and more bottles. Kids and adults continued to add bottles. Lastly, we added finishing details that really helped raise awareness which was the goal of our art project.

By the end of the summer our art project was completed and ready to travel! We built it on a trailer so we could take the awareness-raising sculpture all over. Our artists were so proud of what they had accomplished!!