The Recycling Intervention Committee (RIC), is team made up of artists, designers and individuals concerned about the environment and the impact humans have on the earth. The Toronto-Chicago committee came together out of the concern for Toronto's sister city having an almost non-existent and dysfunctional recycling program in 2006. We saw Toronto's recycling program as a model for change and wanted to create a social action.

snuggle bin To model the possibilities that exist when a community comes together, the RIC team distributed 20 recycling bins to a neighbourhood block in Chicago and proceeded to offer a personalized weekly recycling program. Each week the recyclables were collected, sorted and cleaned. At the end of the 5-week pilot project, The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum offered RIC the opportunity to create a public sculpture from the materials as a way of informing the public and municipal officials about the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling.