WonderLab, Discardia teach sustainable living

Children sewed fabrics to make objects such as oven mitts at the Wonderlab Museum of Science, Health and Technology on Friday as part of the project Discardia.

Wonderlab partnered with Discardia, a project of the Bloomington Center for Sustainable Living, whose focus is to take used discarded materials and refashion them into various items.

The Indiana Arts Commission, the Community Foundation of Bloomington Monroe County, Art Works and Ivy Tech Community College sponsored the event.

According to the Center for Sustainable Living’s website, “Discardia has a goal of stopping textiles and other reusable materials from going into landfills.”

Karen Jepson-Innes, an employee for WonderLab, said WonderLab began staying open late a few years ago on the first Friday of every month in an effort to attract more people to explore what they have to offer in educational and creative exhibits and interactive projects.

Jepson-Innes  said the reason for staying open late was to broaden the typical audience by staying open later and offering reduced rates.

This eventually evolved into the First Friday Evening Science of Art, in which Wonderlab presents a different artistic medium the first Friday of each month.

Discardia member Jeanne Smith showed a display of the type of products created by the non-profit group, such as rings made out of computer chips and handbags sewn together with various fabrics.

The basic concept of Discardia is to take things of little value and make them into something of use.

“The rule is that everything has to be made from something of zero value,” Smith said.
Discardia volunteers supervised excited young children as they used sewing machines to quilt together pieces of fabric to make oven mitts. Children of various ages visited WonderLab to work with a sewing machine to create their end product out of the recycled materials.

The materials provided for the event came from sources including the Bloomington Recycling Center and Discardia itself. Wonderlab and Discardia combined to encourage the idea of sustainability in the community by creating alternative uses of recyclable materials.  

Andrea Oeding, assistant gallery manager for WonderLab, said they brought Discardia for the event because they fit with what Wonderlab was looking for.

“The goal is to get visitors to look at the materials around them in a new way,” Oeding
said.