On my workbench today ...

The Butterfly Project continues! I am still making a series of butterflies from stuff that gets thrown away - mostly food packaging. I have used beverage cans, plastic containers and takeaway coffee cups to list a few materials. Did you know that in Australia we use about 1 billion takeaway coffee cups each year? And that many of them are coated with polyethylene which renders them difficult (pretty well impossible actually) to recycle? I didn't know that before I started  research for this project. Our consumptive ways have a big impact and sometimes it does my head in thinking about that!

These are made from aluminium food and beverage cans - which are immensely and infinitely recyclable but grubby to manufacture. The good news is that when you do recycle a can, you save enough energy to run a 100 watt light bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, and a TV for 2 hours.

That centre on has been made from a compact disc. They are made from some curious stuff - queer arse plastic and what not. Technically they can be recycled but it is a very costly exercise so many of them end up in landfill - or more happily as raw materials for my art!

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