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The Darien group Choose to Reuse is hosting an exhibit of art objects made from recycled plastic to promote its fight for a ban on plastic bags. The exhibit, which opened Sunday at the Darien Nature Center, is called In the Bag. It was curated by husband and wife Peter Wormser and Liz Milwe, who helped ban plastic bags in Westport.
"It's worked out really well," Wormser said of the ban in Westport. "The store owners were initially against it, but then they realized that it's good PR, and that they can sell reusable shopping bags. It takes a little while to make the change. The consumers seem happy."
The exhibit, which runs until April 22, features projects from around the world where plastic and other trash were used to make fashionable, reusable bags. It also includes projects such as an arm chair with a slipcover made with the blue plastic bags The New York Times is delivered in.
Wormser said the traveling exhibit was in New York last year and recently returned from a UN conference in Nairobi. It will next be going to the Boston Children's Museum. "It's a great tool for teaching environmental awareness," he said.
The exhibit also includes a contest where children design reusable bags. "We want to help the environment so there won't be a big pile of trash like at the dump, said 6-year-old Julia Koren, one of the children working on a bag to help promote environmentalism. If we make it into recycling, we can make new things out of it," she said.
Deepika Saksena of Choose to Reuse in Darien said a screening of the film Bag It on the harmful effects of plastic bags helped boost support for the project. "There were 160 people in attendance at the movie, at least. Thirty-five of them were students from the Darien High School AP Environmental Studies class, and they wanted to join the movement. They're doing a project where they gather data from merchants in town, and they're going to be presenting it to the Board of Selectmen."
The group has support from merchants such as Whole Foods, which has catered its events. The group will go before the Board of Selectmen on April 11 to argue the case for banning plastic bags in Darien.
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