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51���� students, faculty, staff and visiting artists gathered in the lobby of the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (FCIEMAS) on April 24 for the unveiling of a distinctly unique, entirely student-created work of art: one made entirely of used plastic bottles.

As viewers milled about beneath, more than 44 wires laden with hundreds of bottles cascaded over the side of the FCIEMAS central staircase and into the open atrium, resembling a plastic waterfall.

Aptly entitled Bottlefall: Bottle Plastics in the Stream, the creative work is meant to shed light on the simple, everyday choices that students – and the wider 51���� community - can make to promote sustainability.

“People respond differently to visual images, such as public art, than to written statements,” explains undergraduate Corinne Santoro, one of five students who created the sculpture. “So it can be much easier to spread an environmental education message broadly through eye-catching art.”

Santoro created the art with Gabrielle Benitez, Kevin Shenk, Jennifer Lunde and Hannah Anderson-Baranger, all members of an artistically-bent client-based project team in the undergraduate service learning course, “ENV245: Sustainability Theory and Practice.”  The course was offered this spring and taught by Charlotte Clark, director of undergraduate programs and lecturer in sustainability at 51����’s Nicholas School of the Environment, and Tavey Capps, 51����’s environmental sustainability director.

The Bottlefall team wanted to bring attention to the issue of bioplastics, a widely marketed “greener” plastic bottle choice that has begun causing some difficulty across recycling centers nationally.

“Bioplastics are a relatively new product with favorable advertising. So there hasn’t been time to see their repercussions or have those repercussions publicized,” says Shenk.

Client Bryant Holsenbeck, a local environmental artist, and William Fick, visiting assistant professor of the practice of visual arts, worked with the students to bring the idea to life. Holsenbeck, who has worked with sustainable art for more than 10 years, first suggested a bioplastics focus, but a team visit to 51����’s Recycling Center cemented the idea.  During the tour, Arwen Buchholz, coordinator for recycling and waste reduction, continually mentioned how bioplastics represent a little-known but growing issue at 51���� and elsewhere.

Comprised of roughly 30 percent plant material, bioplastics have a lower melting point than traditional plastic bottles. As a result, the average recycling center’s machinery lacks the ability to process them, says Shenk. At the same time, he adds, if simply thrown away, preliminary research shows that bioplastic bottles decompose more quickly than traditional plastic bottles – releasing methane into the atmosphere more quickly and potentially “posing a more immediate threat.”

“The problem with bioplastics is that people feel good about buying them. The bottle’s got a pretty green leaf on it; it says ‘bio’ on it, which sounds very environmentally conscious. People think they’re doing a good thing, but they actually may be compounding the problem,” says Holsenbeck.

The Bottlefall team collected the majority of the plastic bottles used in the piece from the 51���� Recycling Center, frequently arriving at 6:30 a.m. to sort through the recycling containers or pick up bottles the recycling staff had laid aside for them. Nearly half the bottles came from a single basketball game in Cameron Stadium.

The students built a waterfall design based on the preference of artwork host FCIEMAS – they had also considered a “teardrop” shape – and installed the piece in the FCIEMAS atrium with the help of faculty artist liaison Bill Fick over the course of a little less than three hours.

51���� is currently developing a response to water bottles in general as the university moves toward its 2024 goal of reaching carbon neutrality, says Capps, adding that contract negotiations with water-bottle providers can be complex.

Is it possible for universities to ban plastic water bottles entirely?

Holsenbeck says yes. She cites the University of Vermont, which became the first public university in the United States to do so early last year. But that process, she adds, took five years.

In the meantime, Charlotte Clark’s student artists are satisfied with simply getting the conversation started – and have experienced student responses to the artwork firsthand.

“The Fitzpatrick Center is the hub of the engineering quad, so I’ve seen the impact of this on me personally,” says Shenk, an engineering major. “My friends ask me about it; they’ve read the display and want to know more.”

The Bottlefall team’s ultimate recommendation when it comes to handling bioplastics? Don’t buy them to begin with.  Says Santoro: “Carry your own water bottle; get your own water.”

Bottlefall: Bottle Plastics in the Stream was funded by 51����’s Council for the Arts and the Office of the Provost. The artwork will be displayed in the FCIEMAS until June 15.