Paper Power: Recycling and Community

by Emmaline Rogers

Last Saturday, St. Mary’s participated in the annual Paper Power competition. Through their hard work and creative thinking, the team was able to build an impressive, paper statue that won them an award in this STEM based competition.

  The St. Mary’s Paper Power team spent four hours this past Saturday building a giant, shoulder-high replica of the bird Blue from the movie Rio. Made entirely out of paper and held together with great excesses tape, the girls’ creation won the Hi-tech Design Award.
           
   The St. Mary’s team was led by Jurnee Kelley (11), sponsored by Ms. Nancy Prillaman, and consisted of Abby Baskind (12), Tashi Wischmeyer (12), Isabella Townsend (12), Leigh Kesser (12), Jasmine Huang (12), Adalyn Meeks (11), Isra Ahmed (11), Lily Monroe (11). Their creation, ‘RIOcycling: Green Machine of 2016,’ stands upon a box with the number 1 written on it in sharpie, while a gold cardboard medal hangs around his neck. Paper scribbled blue and cut into strips with rounded edges forms the feathers that cover outstretched wings, which are held up by tubes of paper beneath the blue decoration. While he was fully assembled on Saturday morning, Blue was designed before creation with a mock-up. In the last thirty minutes of the building time, everyone on every team worked harder and harder to complete their art within the time limit, pushing each other and themselves while still working together. As Jasmine Huang and Abby Baskind said, our team’s favorite part of the competition was how they were able to “finish it and work together”during the last thirty minutes.

           Paper Power itself was first established four years ago as a community event to promote recycling, and now it is held annually at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. Krissy Buck, one of the main Paper Power founders, worked together with Looney Ricks Kiss, an architecture firm with piles of leftover paper, and the U.S. Green Building Council, or USGBC, to create this event. Paper Power teaches Memphis’ youth about the carbon footprint of paper. Stands were stationed all around the event, holding posters about how recycling works, why we should recycle, and how to recycle.  

           Other art pieces included a replication of Rapunzel’s tower from Tangled and Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc. Everyone seemed to have fun, learning  about recycling, as they themselves recycled local, reclaimed paper to create art together in this local event. The pieces will be up for display around the Library until October 8. ​