Dinosaurs From Coke Bottles: It’s a Start

This is Second Chance Week in Los Angeles, part of a statewide celebration aimed at reforming a throwaway society.

Throughout the week, cities and counties, as well as resale businesses and nonprofit organizations, will hold events that enable people to repair, refurbish, sell, donate or buy reusable items.

In short, these items are given a second chance.

“We have about 100 communities doing events,” said Pat Stone of Sacramento’s Local Government Commission, which is coordinating the first-ever event. “In addition to raising awareness, we want to get things actually reused, the way our grandparents did. Think about it--they didn’t throw everything away. And people in Third World countries still don’t.”

Mayor Richard Riordan has proclaimed Second Chance Week in Los Angeles and the city is sponsoring an art contest challenging city employees and elementary school students to apply their creativity to scraps of wood, metal and plastic.

“Our entries include a candelabra made of baling wire, a dinosaur from Coca-Cola bottles and a flower made of recycled soft-drink cans,” said Susana Estreller, a city recycling administrator. “Reuse is more fun than recycling, which is just putting materials into a bin,” she added.

The contest art will be exhibited all this week at the Eagle Rock Arts Center, 2225 Colorado Blvd.

“Reuse translates to less timber clear-cutting and strip-mining, less smog and acid rain, and reduced emissions of greenhouse gases,” writes California environmentalist Kathy Stein, author of “Beyond Recycling: A Re-user’s Guide,” (Clear Light Publishers in Santa Fe, 1997).

Stein has compiled 366 practical ways to save reusable or repairable materials from landfills.

“I’ve been an enthusiastic recycler for years, but Americans have embraced recycling so effectively it can carry itself now,” she said. “It hit me that it’s time to move up that ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ ladder.”

Stein was amazed at the variety of activity she found.

Her handbook lists used building material stores, repair clinics for bicycle owners, used video-game stores and stores that buy and resell used tennis rackets, golf clubs, bowling balls and other sports equipment, and others.

“There’s a lot more happening than flea markets and garage sales,” Stein says.

For more on Second Chance Week events and resources, call (888) 385-7240, or log onto https://www.secondhand.com.