The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: upcycle

  • SCRAP Humboldt: Saving the Planet One Scrap at a Time

    SCRAP Humboldt: Saving the Planet One Scrap at a Time

    Affordable art supplies with environmental consciousness in mind

    Doohickeys, thingamabobs and whatchamacallits galore. One local craft store has it all and does so with purpose to provide a community with creative inspiration and affordable art supplies while reducing, reusing, recycling and repurposing.

    SCRAP Humboldt is a craft supply store with hundreds of items available for creative reuse. The store started as a temporary holiday season shop in 2012 at the Jacoby Storehouse and later became an established organization aimed at repurposing items that society would typically deem as waste.

    Malia Matsumoto first began volunteering her time with SCRAP Humboldt and later became the director of the organization in 2017.

    “As an artist, I taught classes at Scrap and volunteered my time to come take care of the store,” Matsumoto said.

    • The storefront counter of Scrap Humboldt in October 2018. | Photo by Chelsea Wood
    • Shelves stocked with various sorted trinkets and supplies in the storefront of Scrap Humboldt in October 2018. | Photo by Chelsea Wood
    • Shelves stocked with various sorted trinkets and supplies in the storefront of Scrap Humboldt in October 2018. | Photo by Chelsea Wood
    • Shelves stocked with various sorted trinkets and supplies in the storefront of Scrap Humboldt in October 2018. | Photo by Chelsea Wood

    As director, she coordinates events, reaches out to similar organizations for cross pollination and manages staff and volunteers at the center. SCRAP Humboldt also works with other local organizations for mentoring programs like the Humboldt Area Foundation.

    SCRAP Humboldt relies heavily on donations and receives items for reuse from community members, businesses and even Humboldt State University. Steady donations also come from partnerships with local businesses that aim to reduce their product waste. Local donors include Los Bagels, Kokatat and the Humboldt Bay Coffee Company.

    Donations are sorted into respective categories and then placed on the store’s floor. SCRAP Humboldt has supply sections for sewing, painting, scrapbooking, holidays, jewelry-making and crafting.

    “Because everything is donation-based, it’s a really low price point,” Matsumoto said. “As an artist or a maker you’re able to get more materials than you would if you went to a traditional brick and mortar store like Michael’s or JoAnn’s.”

    The variety of conventional and unconventional up-cycled items SCRAP Humboldt has to offer gives locals access to affordable art supplies. The organization also hosts weekly tutorial classes to teach the community how to complete projects with repurposed materials.

    Matsumoto and the crew at SCRAP Humboldt have a passion for diverting reusable waste from landfills by finding creative ways to repurpose items that typically wouldn’t be thought of as art supplies.

    Matsumoto said that once people start making things on their own, they begin to see the hard work it takes to create something. Matsumoto said people also learn to give more value to scraps while seeing the potential for an old thing to become new.

    The SCRAP Humboldt team spreads this message and their passion for waste reduction and art creation with the community by offering summer camps for kids, creative reuse classes and a space for an artist-in-residence program.

  • Once litter, now art

    Once litter, now art

    Hands gripped ankles, one leg pointed for balance, creating a human bridge. An arm reaches out over a river in the community forest to grab a long forgotten sour cream container. It would have never decomposed, so instead, it was upcycled into art. A collaborative art installation to visualize human influence on our natural world, showing what we leave behind and what will stay behind. The tagline: “you made your bed, now sleep in it.”

    Jonelle Alvarez, a Humboldt State student majoring in environmental science and management, helped collect the trash and turn it into a sleeping student. She was inspired to be participating in the transition from trash to art.

    “There was a lot more trash than I imagined and it would’ve stayed out there forever,” Alvarez said. “We had to get really creative with it. Prove we have no limits.”

    This past Sunday, a group of students from Earth Guardians suited up in their rain gear and headed to the forest, armed with empty sandbags to fill up with trash. It was the first of many community forest clean up days hosted by the club.

    Earth Guardians is a global movement founded and sustained by young people to spread resiliency through direct action activism. They are demanding greener policy from governments and leaders around the world, co-creating our future by empowering youth leaders. They are currently suing the federal government for endangering our generation through excessive fossil fuel consumption.

    Earth Guardians picking up trash in the community forest. Photo by Madeline Bauman.

    The Humboldt State Earth Guardians chapter meets every Monday in the CCAT house at 5 p.m., fostering an all-inclusive, accessible space for local activists to turn their ideas into reality.

    Simone McGowan, an environmental studies student who brought Earth Guardians to Humboldt, struggled to find an accessible outlet for her activism, a space for people to feel good about themselves and what they’re doing.

    “We’re uniting a large group of activists for political and social action on the macro and micro scale,” McGowan said. “Activism should be accessible and everyone should be included in the conversation.”

    Earth Guardians promotes activism for anyone trying to catalyze change. They are bridging the disconnect between social and environmental justice, starting an open dialogue where all voices can be heard.

    Jacob Gellatly, an environmental resource engineering major, believes Earth Guardians’ inclusive, collaborative activism is the answer to the social and environmental problems that plague our planet.

    “Don’t focus on what can’t be done,” Gellatly said. “Instead, figure out what we can do together to make it happen.”