 I love to sit and contemplate, I do that all the time. Right, you can sit and contemplate the future of the environment. It's like cozy, but also a little uncomfortable. Yeah, there's a sense of eeriness. I am the director and curator here at Champlain College Art Gallery. And Rebecca is a faculty member. She originally pitched me this idea of sort of creating this plastic, seafoamy wave of plankton and creatures. And then she's sort of tied together this idea of a call to action. She called it data visualization, but it's like a visual representation of all of the sort of plastic consumption and detritus that we individually dispose of on a regular basis. And it's been an incredible show. It's gotten great feedback. Rebecca Schwartz is a community engaged artist with goals of increasing health on many scales, including personal, community, and environmental health. Patterns in nature inspire her work in a range of modes. They can be sculptural, collaborative, and in communications. Rebecca teaches communications and creative media here at Champlain College and works to connect volunteers, patients, families, and caregivers with the Arts in the Hospital Coordinating Art from the Heart Program of Burlington City Arts and UVM Medical Center and Children's Hospital. Before we tear this all apart, which I'm really excited for this cathartic moment, I wanna say a little bit about what you're looking at. So this wave of plastic is also a seafoam bubble that hopefully you've rested in over the course of the past few weeks. But this wave isn't just arbitrary. That angle of the wave represents the steep increase we've seen in fossil fuel extraction and in temperature increases, plastic production, chemical production, and also species extinction. So this is all really hard stuff to talk about, which is, and think about, which is why we have this contemplative space for us to dedicate ourselves to what we love, what we care about. And I hope that for each of us that we take the time to choose anything that you care about and try to make an impact there. So hopefully you've made postcards over the course of the show and one of the things we'll be doing is finishing off those postcards. Some people have started some art and you can write a message. You can write a message to anybody who can affect change. Really, it's up to you, write to whoever you want to write to and we have the stamps to send off these butterflies and hopefully change the world. So what else can I say? Some beach plastics from just a half hour of cleanup are in the middle there and a couple other art pieces that you'll experience and they're gonna come apart. So the other thing to think about as Wiley told us is how do we know what's recyclable and what isn't because a lot of things can't be recycled and I hope we can influence people to have cleaner systems. But Recycle Ronda from Chinden Salad Waste District, will you come up and talk to us a little bit about what we can and can't recycle? So yeah, there is rules to recycling and for very good reason because not everything actually is recyclable, not everything can be turned into something new and we'll focus on the plastics because that's what we're focusing on. With plastic film or I call it floppy plastic, it doesn't belong in your blue bin so I'll put it in there please and thank you but you can gather it up and take it back to a lot of different grocery stores. I know that Shals and Hannafords at least do it and they'll take it back and turn it into decking and benches and so on and so forth through a company called Trex. Serial bags can go back to the grocery store to be recycled that way, all right? Even though it doesn't have a number on it and it sounds really crunchy, that is one that we know is a number two. All of the bread bags can go back to the grocery store. Any wrapping, like from your paper towels, toilet paper, all of that, all can also go back into the floppy plastic recycling. Zip black bags and everything has to be clean because recycling as much as people would love it to be dirty, it is, we hopefully, will be clean so make sure your stuff is all cleaned out. Real people have to touch it so keep that in mind. Now, for hard plastic or rigid plastic is what it's called, if it cannot hold a liquid, don't even think about putting it in the blue bin, all right? A couple of no-nos is no hazardous or cleaning materials. So if on the label it says caution danger, warning poison, empty it out or use it all up, put the cat back on and just put it in the trash please because you might empty it all but you might leave just a little bleach in there and then it can cause problems for other people. We have to follow the rules here. As far as these kinds of containers, basically all of your drink containers except for milk are going to be number one plastic. In order to be truly recyclable, only ones choosing fives, if you've ever looked at the little number on the bottom, it tells you what kind of plastic it is, that's it. So we're looking for one, two, five, keep the earth alive. Easy to remember, if it's not a one, two or five, you can put it in the blue bin, it just probably isn't gonna get recycled if it doesn't fall into a one, two or five, all right? And that realm for single use yogurt-y things, check the bottom of your cups, all right? If they're number six, try to switch to a different yogurt brand, all right? You, we all have the power to make that change. We're better yet by a big tub of yogurt. And don't let out into little reusable dishes cause as you'll hear me say a hundred times, reduce and reuse a lot more important in this world than recycling will ever be. We cannot recycle our way out of this. I won't want to call it a kushastrophe. In order to go in the blue bin, it must be bigger than a squirrel's head or bigger than two inches by two inches. So little caps that are flying around by themselves, not acceptable, so don't put those in the bin. But if you connect your cap, the head to the body, as I said, then you can put that whole entire thing into the recycled bin. All right. Thank you. Well, you know, I'm sure. Well, it's for that, all right? Thank you so much. You're welcome. And luckily we have your knowledge here to help us as we sort this mess that we're in. And so Ashley from Rosalia Project working on marine debris. My name's Ashley and I'm the executive director of a local nonprofit called the Rosalia Project. And we are working on the problem of marine debris. We do education programs and outreach, but we also do a ton of cleanups. So we're gonna be doing one for Earth Day down on the waterfront, so please come and join us. And what's really important about these cleanups is when we're collecting all this debris is really getting an understanding of what is out there. What types of plastics are actually making their way into our public waterways, into our rivers, into our lakes, into our oceans. When we can understand how and what is in the environment then we can really work towards solutions. And that data actually plays a really, really important part. Has anybody ever heard of the United Nations sustainability goals? Well, cool. So one of them is ocean protection and restoration. And even though we're in Vermont, let's face it. We are a huge watershed. So all the rivers and estuaries and Lake Champlain is connected on both sides to the Atlantic Ocean through the Hudson on the south and also through the St. Lawrence Seaway to the north. And so what we are working on is it's an activation campaign to put together a hundred squares that will be sewn together by our friend, Runa Ray, who's a sustainable fashion designer. And so we're looking for inspiration artists. It can be quotes, it can be drawings. And then these are gonna be sewn together. We're looking to get a hundred of them. We're almost halfway there. And they'll be sewn together and it will fly this September in New York City at the United Nations. So you have an opportunity to contribute to our ocean flag. And then I'll just give one more plug. Our organization, June, July and August, we run expeditions in the Gulf of Maine on our 60 foot oceanographic sailing research vessel. And we're working on the problem of marine debris doing cleanups, doing education programs, sailing out to remote areas. And we are looking for interns, volunteers to join us. You all are a perfect audience. So if anybody is interested in learning more about the problem of marine debris, in particular in the Gulf of Maine, which is really unique because we have a huge lobster industry which contributes to a lot of the debris that we find. Come and talk to me. All right, so we have a room full of amazing people doing amazing projects. You can finish up the postcards that are here. We wanna make sure that they're flat and fully addressed so that they can find their way to who their audience is, their target audience. You can be in the art for the last few minutes of the show and experience the art. You could be making a flag with Ashley and you can be sorting the plastic for recycling or garbage. And then we'll have help from Recycle Rhonda to know if we're on track. And I just wanna thank you all for being here and thank you Wiley for making this all happen. So yay to all of you and go where you wanna go and circulate and talk to each other. Thanks.