Chattanooga Pulse

Earth Day celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and a city partnership is organizing an awareness campaign and art contest in city rec centers, leading up to Earth Day festivities in April.

“The Art of Recycling” is being organized by a group of participants in the 2009-2010 Leadership Chattanooga class in partnership with the City of Chattanooga Department of Education, Arts & Culture and Parks and Recreation Department. The idea is to encourage kids to participate in Earth Day activities in afterschool programs in rec centers across the city. This coincides with the Department of Arts & Culture’s recent launch of its citywide campaign for volunteers to reach out to young people during the “Most Dangerous Time of the Day—3 to 6 p.m.”

“The Art of Recycling educates kids and teens about what to recycle and how to recycle it,” says Samantha Jones, project spokesperson and owner and general manager of Mellow Mushroom and Salon Haven. “We want to get young people excited about recycling so they will make it part of their everyday lives—so to jumpstart the movement, we’re launching a city-wide ‘recycled art’ contest.”

The contest will ask kids and teens at each city recreation center to work together to create a collective “recycled art” project from the recyclables they collect at their centers. The Art of Recycling contest entries will be on display at Chattanooga Market on Earth Day weekend, Sunday, April 25, 2010.

Recycling bins have been placed in city recreation centers to facilitate the Art of Recycling, compliments of the Electric Power Board. The contest will culminate with a free trip to the Tennessee Aquarium and IMAX theatre, lunch courtesy of Mellow Mushroom, and a “recycled art” trophy created by Collier Construction for the winning recreation center and the kids and teens who participated in the project.

For 25 years, Leadership Chattanooga has been educating rising community leaders—and part of the 10-month program is focused on community projects like The Art of Recycling. Other outcomes of Leadership Chattanooga group projects include TasteBuds (a local food guide produced in partnership with Crabtree Farms and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) and the award-winning Take Root campaign (an urban tree-planting program developed in partnership with the City of Chattanooga).

The Art of Recycling team includes Montrell Besley, City of Chattanooga Parks and Recreation Department; Jim Catanzaro, Minor, Bell & Neal; Heather DeGaetano, Tennessee Aquarium; Karen Frank, Memorial Health Care System; Samantha Jones, Mellow Mushroom and Salon Haven; Todd Leamon, Hamilton County; Ketha Richardson, Electric Power Board; and Melissa Turner, City of Chattanooga Department of Education, Arts & Culture.

For more information about the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day and the service, action, and celebration taking place in communities and cities around the globe, visit www.earthday.net. For more information about The Art of Recycling, contact Melissa Turner at (423) 425-7826 or turner_m@mail.chattanooga.gov