The Paper Passion Project: Introduction

 The Paper Passion Project

    What Is The Paper Passion Project?

    In hopes of serving the Salt Lake City community, local artists, and the planet, I created The Paper Passion Project. This project was born from my own love of crafting and recycling—fulfilling my own need for a creative outlet—while encouraging other artists to explore new mediums in a sustainable and affordable way.
    By crafting handmade, recycled paper and distributing it to local artists for free, I hope to encourage recycling, self-expression, and have a positive effect in my community. 

Why Handmade, Recycled Paper?

    All my life I have been passionate about the planet and recycling. While it started small—as most passions do—I can pinpoint the exact moment that my initial interest augmented.
    Growing up, my parents refused to pay the additional monthly fee for a home recycling bin. Once I was old enough to drive, I began sorting and storing my recyclables in my room to drive to the closest recycling center thirty minutes away.
    After meticulously collecting paper for weeks, I came home from school one day to see that my mother had thrown it all away. Despite my tears and anger, she scolded me for hoarding garbage and insisted that I get over it.
    Clearly, I never did.
    While it may be easy to chide my parents for their mistakes, Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality states, “The 2023 data collected found that while the vast majority of material sent to recycling facilities was recycled, only a small percentage of waste generated in Utah was sent by consumers to a recycling facility.”
    This means that Utahns are throwing recyclable products into our landfills. According to the Department’s website, Utah only recycles 5% of all of their waste produced—compared to the rest of our nation’s statistic of 32%. All my life I have been told by local residents that Utah’s recycling centers don’t actually recycle anything. I now understand that this wrong or outdated information has spread across Utah’s mindset like a plague. While I—obviously—hope that the entire world will do better in their waste management and sustainability actions, we need to focus on what we can improve as a community for our community.   
    According to USU Facilities, recycling saves water, trees, landfill space, oil, energy, and creates jobs all while reducing pollutants. As consumers, we are tasked with simply caring enough to reduce, reuse, and recycle what we use. While corporations do not care enough about us to implement sustainable practices, we must care enough about our local community, climate, and each other to do the right thing—no matter the cost.

How Does It Work?    

    As this is a small-scale, passion project, I do not expect it to change the world overnight. For the past year-and-a-half, I have been crafting paper out of used, shredded paper. 
    At my fulltime job as a barber, I get to talk to and connect with local residents and artists in my community everyday. If they are interested, I give them roughly ten pieces of recycled paper (a few of each size: large, medium, and small), along with a paper explaining my passion and my blog. If the artist—current or soon-to-be—wishes, they can send their art to me where I will share their art here on this blog. As paper quality, color, thickness, and amount is unpredictable, I accept no payment for the paper I give away. 
    Ideally, this blog will be filled with local artists—of all kinds—work, all tied together by the same paper, sustainable goal, and community. 

What to Expect in the Future

    Once The Paper Passion Project has spread around the Salt Lake City community, I hope to post art from artists of all kinds, including poets, acrylic, pen, charcoal, papercut, calligraphy, and more! As well as posting the art that they are proud of, I hope local artists also share their pieces that didn't work out  and why (I have my suspicions about water color being used on handmade paper). In a perfect world, I hope to somehow expand this project, making a space where other artists and crafters could attend free classes or offer to pull sheets of paper for the community. However, I would need a much larger set up, more space, frames, and felt. Lastly, as this is a small blog that is based on sustainability and getting in touch with my local community, I will also be sharing any volunteer work I've done that is relevant.  




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