Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

SustainaBALL

Korrin B.

May 17, 2009 - 4:00 PM

This weekend I partook in a prom-inspired event that turned out to have its own very unique moments throughout the night. The event was called SustainaBALL 2009 and was put on by the Planning, Public Policy, and Management Student Advisory Committee. The theme was public transportation, creative reuse, and the procession of all species. The event was held at the BRING Recycling Center and attendees were asked to ride their bikes or take the EMX bus to the event because they were going to purposefully not provide any public parking.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to start at the beginning. The day of the event, I got crafty. I needed to make some awesome accessories out of recycled materials for the event. When my mom was recently in town, we did a little shopping, so I was left with a few shoeboxes and some colorful, plastic shopping bags. I looked at them and became inspired. Scissors and hot glue gun in hand, I began to create. First, I made my date a boutonniere. With some basic cutting of a shoe box, a Gap bag, and a Wet Seal bag, and the perfect placement of the pieces, my first creation was done. I glued it all to a safety pin and sat back to admire it. By this time, I was in full craft mode and so I started on my corsage. Using the same materials, I cut and glued away. I found an old hair tie to glue the recycled flower to so that I could wear it. Next, I found an old broken pair of earrings in my room, so I took off the old parts of them so that only the hooks were left. I then created two mini flowers that looked like the big one I had made for my corsage and glued them onto the earring hooks. I was pretty stoked looking at all of my recycled creations. It made me feel like I should do recycled art more often! Never underestimate what you can do when you have a hot glue gun in hand. The possibilities are truly endless. All dressed up with my recycled accessories, I was ready for SustainaBALL.

My date and I went to dinner first at Kabuki's, a Japanese restaurant in Eugene that does the type of grilling of food that involves all sorts of fancy flips and tricks while the chef cooks. It was a lot of fun and turned out to be rather funny as well because it happened to be Springfield High School's actual prom night on Saturday. So, we were sat at one of the tables with eight high schoolers all dressed up in their formal attire, discussing events of the world in a way that only high schoolers can. One of them also had brought their baby with them on their prom adventure. It was a first for me seeing a high school girl with her baby as her prom date. I thought of the many children I've worked with in my jobs that come from rough backgrounds and contemplated the incredible importance of condoms and good health education classes.

Next, it was off to the ball! The BRING Recycling Center is kind of in the middle of nowhere. BRING is a nonprofit recycling organization that finds creative ways to reuse materials and also teaches local kids on the importance of recycling and reducing waste. All of the proceeds from the SustainaBALL went to help fund BRING's education programs. When we got there, the event was just getting started. First, we got our prom picture taken with their creative background and then headed toward the dance floor. All it took was for Rick Astley's infamous "Never Gonna Give You Up" to get the dancing going. Wow, I always forget how good that song and music video are. I happen to be watching it while I write the blog post. Haha. The DJ spun a lot of fun nineties music throughout the night and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Some people just had little recycled accessories on like me, but others had gone all out with things like newspaper suits or wigs made from plastic bags. It was a very creative, silly event and I definitely think it was probably better than the high school proms going on. The event ended at 10:30pm, so that everyone could catch the EMX back into town before it stopped running for the night. Overall, good times and now I'm left with some pretty awesome earrings that I'm pretty sure I'll wear again sometime soon because they're so cool!