School: Foothills Montessori

Student: Olivia Swadkins

Teacher: Erica Sherlock

Grade: 8th

Subject: Upcycling

Description: For my project, I decided to make recycled shoes out of cans and bottle tabs. I had an old pair of shoes that were completely ruined with gold and maroon paint all over and were scuffed up. The first step I did to make these shoes were painted with black t-shirt paint. I decided to use a t-shirt printing ink because it is flexible and won’t crack. The next step is I went around looking for cans and I washed them out and cut them up and used E6000 glue and epoxy and glued them all over the shoes. I had to use rubber bands and paper clips to give the cans the shape of the shoe when the epoxy was drying. After that, I saved all the tabs and used them as eyelets and then laced with a ribbon from an old dress. I chose to share this project because the fashion industry as a whole is causing a lot of damage to climate change. 21 billion pounds of textiles and fabric goes to waste and put in landforms each year, and 10-15% of clothes go to second-hand stores and I want to get that percentage higher. I think this is a very important cause because if we keep up how much waste there are more fossil fumes that break down the ozone layer and will cause more cancers without that layer. The fashion industry is so diverse but recreating and restructuring old items of clothing can make that 21 billion pounds go down at least a bit.