Scraponomics Episode 82: ScrapFest 2015 Is Coming!

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” — Aristotle

It’s official. ScrapFest has become large enough to be its own event!

For those of you who are new to ScrapFest, it’s a scrap metal art competition Friedland hosts and sponsors every year. Around 20 teams get an hour to pick up to 500 pounds of metal out of our plant, and then they get two weeks to make a sculpture. The sculptures are then placed (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and People’s Choice) and auctioned off right here in Old Town, Lansing. A portion of the proceeds goes to the artists, and the other portion goes to the Old Town Commercial Association in their effort to revitalize Old Town.

Since its inception, ScrapFest has been tied to the Festival of the Moon and Sun, which is also a cool beer and wine event. The cool part about this year, though, is that because ScrapFest is its own event and on a different weekend (that is, the weekend of July 17th), there will be educational activities for kids, along with art and food vendors. This makes that weekend more of a family-friendly art festival.

The collection day for ScrapFest (the day the teams gather the scrap material from our plant) is this Saturday, May 30th at 10am. This is actually the same day as Be a Tourist in Your Own Town, which we also participate in. Suffice it to say, there will be a lot of commotion at Friedland this Saturday.

Of course, the best part about ScrapFest is the philosophy behind it. Recycling can happen in many ways. The scrap material in our plant is sent to mills and refineries for one price, and then sold to manufacturers as newly re-melted material at another price. Similarly, an artist can envision a sculpture through scrap material, which can then be bought by an art collector, and the artist can then recycle the remaining scrap material with us. Either way, the common theme here is that where there’s recycling, there’s value.

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