蜜桃传媒

What’s better than channeling finals week stress into creativity? Channeling that stress into creativity while helping combat plastic pollution.  

The Department of Chemistry, the Graduate Chemistry Club and UBChemClub are hosting a clever way for students, faculty and staff to find some stress relief during finals week through a broken plastics workshop. The workshop will allow attendees to take a break from exams and be creative while utilizing microplastics collected on campus to create their very own piece of art. Along the way, participants will explore the environmental impact of microplastics and spark dialogue around how art can help us creatively confront pollution and reimagine waste.

Local artist and UB alumna Nicole Chochrek, MFA ’22, will lead the sustainable art workshop for attendees. The hands-on experience will take place from 2-4 p.m. May 8 in the General Chemistry Help Center, 110 Natural Sciences Complex, a place that also provides extra support to the thousands of students who take general chemistry every year.

The workshop is free, but space is limited. . 

“We know finals week can be stressful for students,” says Javid Rzayev, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences. “We recently remodeled the General Chemistry Help Center in the NSC with the hopes of attracting more students to the space to help them with their studies and use it for activities like this. This event is a great way for us to not only combine the arts with the sciences, but it also gives students an opportunity to have some fun while being kind to the Earth.”

Chochrek’s Microplastic Recycling Art Bin Project landed at UB last year. The installation included two collection bins located at Flint Loop on the North Campus and the Main Circle on the South Campus. In total, the UB bins collected 1,641 pieces of smaller plastic debris and plastics, with the top culprits gathered being bottle caps, plastic wrappers, food wrappers, plastic pull tabs and bread tags. The crowdsourced items gathered in the UB bins, as well as others installed throughout Erie and Niagara counties, are used by Chochrek in her art practice and for special projects, including workshops like this. She even created a .

“I began gathering small plastics in 2019, knowing they would continue to break up into pieces too small to see. Due to their size, they’re often overlooked and missed during typical cleanups, so I wanted to create a focused effort to address and reduce their environmental impact,” says Chochrek. “As an artist these small colorful fragments became an enticing material to work with — a free, abundant and accessible medium that had the ability to address the magnitude of its influence on our landscapes.

“The creation of the Microplastic Recycling Art Bins was an attempt to not only create points of intervention around the city to help inform and educate, but to also invite people into my practice,” she adds.

Participants at the UB workshop will sift through the collected microplastics from Chochrek’s bin project and use their findings to create a one-of-a-kind mosaic inside a clay dish that they can take home.

The Department of Chemistry has a deep understanding of the impact of plastics and the persistence of forever chemicals in plastics on our environment and our health. Faculty and students are at the forefront of research efforts to strengthen the world’s understanding of the impact of these plastics on the environment. These researchers include graduate student Mindula Wijayahena, who is secretary of the Graduate Chemistry Club, one of the event’s hosts.

“Plastic forever chemicals, primarily classes of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), are human-made chemicals that are used in a lot of applications like plastic manufacturing, food packaging, pizza boxes and disposable paper cups,” says Wijayahena. “They have unique water and oil-proof properties. The problem with these chemicals is that they don’t break down in the environment or in our bodies. So, the forever chemicals can enter our bodies when we drink, eat and even when we breathe.”

Wijayahena works in the Aga Laboratory for Environmental Research and Testing (ALERT) group with Diana Aga, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Henry M. Woodburn Chair and director of RENEW Institute. Alongside Aga, Wijayahena focuses on developing methods to detect and identify these forever chemicals in biological systems like human blood and fish. Additionally, she conducts research on bioremediation strategies, exploring the use of bacteria to degrade/break down these pollutants.

“In recognition of plastics recycling as a global societal challenge, UB has amassed a growing number of researchers and students dedicated to understanding the fate of plastics contaminants in the environment and enhancing the recycling process,” says Rzayev, whose research focuses on plastics recycling. “Such workshops (like Chochrek’s) serve as catalysts for student creativity while simultaneously raising awareness of an escalating environmental concern.”

In addition to this workshop to inspire change, last month Chochrek last month visited the Energy Environment and Society class led by Kirk Jalbert, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Environment and Sustainability. Chochrek shared her work with the class and the students discussed the larger impacts of plastic and limitations of existing infrastructure. Chochrek explained to students that she felt comfortable creating this new recycling system because of limitations with the existing infrastructure to manage smaller plastic debris. “While it is no singular solution, I am hopeful that this project ignites curiosity and creative solutions for plastic pollution,” she says.