An Over Abundance of Trash - Recycled Sandals - Lloyd Sutton

One of the biggest problems our environment suffers from aesthetically is an overabundance of trash.  Over the past several years, the EPA has made an effort to make changes to the regulations regarding municipal solid waste landfills.  One of these changes in regulations is a clearer definition of what is “solid waste”.  The EPA constantly struggles with finding ways to reduce land used for landfills even though the amount of trash produced continues to increase at an alarming rate.  For my blog post, I wanted to do something to prove that there are alternate uses for nearly everything that we throw away.  With a little bit of discovery, we could greatly reduce the amount of our garbage that ends up immediately in landfills after a single use.  I brainstormed many ideas and had to essentially fill my room with miscellaneous trash before actually coming up with something useful that I could make.  I spent a significant amount of time riding my bike around town and peeking in trash cans, looking for different types of garbage that I could use to make something substantial.  

My proudest moment in completing this project was when I discovered that aside from the thread used to sew together part of the sandals, I could make the sandals completely out of recycled materials and convert even trash into the adhesive that holds the shoes together. 

I hope that through this blog post I am able to cause people to think twice about the things they throw away.  Some of the most common things that we readily dispose of could easily be converted into having alternative uses.  

Recycled Sandals

 

 

 

     Every year Americans produce enough truckloads of garbage that if each garbage truck were parked back to back, the line of trucks could extend halfway to the moon.  While my insignificant project of making sandals completely out of recycled materials has relatively no impact on space saved in a landfill, it proves a point that there can be alternate uses to almost everything that we throw away.  My initial plan was to make complete shoes, but I ran out of time with school deadlines to meet.  So, I settled with sandals.

Garbage Utilized:

-Cardboard

-Plastic grocery bags

-Old bicycle tires

-Styrofoam & citrus oil

-An old towel

All materials needed can be found in any dumpster

    My first several ideas failed (miserably) as I attempted using shredded newspaper to weave something that I could use as a fabric.  Let's just say that weaving isn't my forte.  With plastic grocery bags being the most annoying and ever present source of trash, I decided to try something using those.  What I came up with, with the help of this blog, was fusing together plastic bags using an iron to make a flexible, somewhat durable material.  I had experimented with other plastic bags and ended up making a shriveled, burnt, stinky plastic sheet before I found out the bags had to be made out of #4 plastic.  After covering the bags in paper and ironing, they should be semi-flexible and look something like this:

     I then cut the fused plastic bags into two inch wide straps and sewed the edges to make them look not-so-trashy.

     Afterwards I cut out four soles that I traced from my own shoes from a cardboard box.  I wrapped each of the soles in plastic from more grocery bags and shrunk the plastic to fit nicely over the cardboard by again using an iron, don't forget to have paper between the iron and plastic...  (The plastic is to waterproof the cardboard so it doesn't get soggy when walking around in different weather).  Then I took two of the soles for the tops of the sandals, cut out enough of the old towel to cover them, and sewed the towel onto them.  The pieces now look like this:

     The next part I was the most proud of, because even the adhesive to hold everything together is recycled. I found a video online that shows how to make glue using nothing but styrofoam and citrus oil.  Check it out here.  You can then take your old bike tire, cut off the beading around the outside, cut out the shape of your sole (you may need to improvise and cut several smaller pieces), and glue it to the bottom of your cardboard-wrapped-in-plastic sole to give you a little tread. Smother both soles in recycled glue, place your straps between them, and then clamp together until dry.  BAM! Recycled sandals.  I'll give you a dollar if you wear them in public.