Jump start your creativity!

Game on! There’s a pretty cool contest going on that ocean fans, recycling nuts and crafty creatives should participate in: the Summer Sustainability Creativity Challenge!

This contest is all about taking things destined for the trash or recycling bin and giving them a second life as art (functional or not). For inspiration, check out the famous fish trio made entirely of plastic bottles that was on display during the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. These incredible fish actually inspired this contest according to Ann McElhatton, a blogger for beach chair scientist, who also happens to be a field biologist, naturalist and creator of the contest.

But don’t worry, Ann isn’t expecting you to build or create something on par with the enormous plastic fish, she is just hoping you will be creative and think outside the box or bin. Take an everyday item that you were going to toss and think of a way to transform it into art or reuse that item in an artsy way. Maybe you will even find a better purpose (and better looking purpose) for an item in its second life! You never know…you might surprise yourself.

As Ann says in her post about the contest, “This contest is set up to demonstrate that anyone, anywhere can make an impact on saving the ocean. That’s right, even if you’re a Minnesota-ite (or is it Minnesotian?) everything that goes into your watershed will end up in the sea. This contest is also set up to help build awareness as to how much waste we produce that we could otherwise reuse.”

So jump start your creativity, have some fun and help save the oceans! (Plus, there are some pretty cool prizes.) For all the contest rules and details read the Summer Sustainability Creativity Challenge post on the beach chair scientist website, which is a website you should definitely check out anyway, it’s awesome!