The Compassion Bench
In honor of Earth Day, we’re focusing this month on compassionate action in the environment and how we can be kinder to the Earth that allows life to thrive. From the food you consume to the land your shelter sits upon, the Earth is the foundational core and commonality that we as humans all share and partake in. It’s our garden and it’s our responsibility to take care of it.
Often we hear of the large scale impact that our activity is having on our planet’s resources and natural landscape. However, the issue is getting to the core of what we can do to help alleviate this impact, and work towards this on a daily basis, especially when we’re competing against a society that derives its economic basis from mass production. It’s been over the course of the past year that our Environmental interest group here at Compassionate Dallas-Ft.Worth has been experimenting with and planning to build a Compassion Bench. The Compassion Bench in Davis, California (pictured below) was created and built by our friend David Breaux with the help of his community. With the efforts of folks from all walks of life, David was able to source enough “bottle bricks” — bricks made from 20 oz. Gatorade bottles stuffed to the brim with scrap plastic, to build a bench that could serve the community and help facilitate compassionate conversations.
Why Bottle Bricks?
Some of you may be familiar with the Pacific Garbage Patch. It’s a massive swath of the Pacific Ocean that contains several feet of tiny plastic scraps. The problem is we’re not sure how it got there or where it’s coming from. Needless to say, our plastic consumption isn’t helping. Next time you’re out – look around. Look in the bushes of the shopping mall or grocery store, your neighborhood sidewalk, or even on the side of the highway. Plastic is everywhere. And it’s not large plastic containers, it’s all the little tiny scraps that don’t make it all the way from your recycling bin to the recycling center, the lightweight pieces that accidentally blow out of your car, and all the other little ways the pieces can escape from our control and into the environment. A whole lot of little scraps turn into one giant problem.
The Compassion Bench is one solution in which we take plastic containers such as the 20 oz. Gatorade bottles featured below and stuff them with as much plastic scrap material as possible. The key is to use a dowel or some other object to ensure that you’re compressing the scraps as much as possible in order to achieve maximum density. The high density makes the bottle sturdy enough to be used as a brick and then recycled in the form of a bench or other structure.
We’ve already started making progress on collecting bricks, but it’ll take the whole community to achieve a Compassion Bench. Come join us at Earth Day Texas, April 21-23 at Fair Park in Dallas, TX to get your very own bottle brick to start stuffing and to learn more about how you can create a more compassionate and healthy planet.
And here is a fun shot of our friend David Breaux in action and spreading compassion, as capture by Google Streetview.
Throw a Brick Party!
