SPRINGFIELD, PA — Residents used recycled/upcycled materials to create exciting decorative and useful items as part of a friendly competition across SageLife senior living communities.
“We challenged residents at our communities to make projects out of at least 75% recycled or upcycled materials,” says Kim Smith, Vice President of Operations. “We were blown away with the results, which included both highly practical items and appealing artistic concepts. More importantly, though, the project turned neighbors into friends as they worked for a common goal and had fun together.”
The Recycling Challenge was part of SageLife’s innovative monthly STEM programming. “Much of our social and intellectual wellness programming has a liberal arts focus: book clubs, theater outings, and music performances,” says SageLife Founder and President Kelly Andress. “We created a STEM track to serve our more scientific-minded residents, and it’s been a huge success!”
SageLife’s four communities in Pennsylvania — Daylesford Crossing, Echo Lake, Plush Mills, and The 501 at Mattison — all created strong entries.
Straw Hat Bird Houses
The team from Daylesford Crossing in Paoli, Pa., were extremely resourceful in creating their straw hat bird houses.
“We had several hats leftover from a springtime Ladies Hat Day at the Devon Horse Show trip and a Western-themed Halloween Party,” says Life Enrichment Director Mary Small. “For the bottoms of the houses, we used the lids from our meal containers from a trip to Longwood Gardens. Residents in our Personal Care neighborhood decorated the houses with flowers and craft supplies we already had — there was no need to buy anything new, and the birdhouses are a wonderful reminder of all the fun trips and activities we’ve enjoyed together.”
The bird houses are now home to appreciative feathered friends in the community’s Connections Memory Care courtyard and alongside the communal vegetable garden.
An ‘Echo’-Friendly Recycled Farmyard
Residents at Echo Lake, in Malvern, Pa., upcycled no-longer-needed materials into an entire farmyard, complete with animals, a barn, and a white split rail fence.
“Our whole community was very excited about this project, and we received so many donations of materials to recycle that we had to stop our donor drive early,” says Bethany McCardell, Life Enrichment Director at Echo Lake. “Over time, the exhibit kept growing with more animals, and while we were considering the future of our planet and the importance of recycling, we decided to create a robot who would be responsible for taking care of the farm and animals. So we then needed to create an Echo-Friendly Farmer Robot Control Panel for the exhibit as well.”
Residents in Echo Lake’s Assisted Living and Memory Care neighborhoods also contributed by painting water and soda bottle planters, which added real-life foliage to the faux farm.
Plan(t)ing for the Future
The two vertical gardens created at Plush Mills, in Wallingford, Pa., were true community-wide efforts, with residents, team members, and their families all donating bottles, jugs, wheels, rope, and metal frames to be upcycled into future-forward projects.
The vertical gardens are now home to flowers that were sprouted in Plush Mills’ Personal Care neighborhood.
“This project has really opened our eyes to the devastation plastic has on our environment, so we decided we wanted to take this plastic challenge even further,” says Life Enrichment Director John Small. “We’re using all the leftover plastic supplies that were donated to start our 12-month recycling challenge with NEXTREX.”
NEXTREX uses 100 percent recycled soft plastic to produce outdoor decking and construction materials. “The 12-month challenge will challenge us to collect 1000 lbs. of soft plastic material throughout the year,” says Small. “When we reach that goal, Nextrex will provide us an outdoor bench made out of all the recycled material free of charge!”
501 Junkbot Community
Residents at The 501 at Mattison Estate, in Ambler, Pa., chose to recreate their own community in recycled form. Their creative and colorful diorama of the building — complete with its distinctive portico — incorporated all manner of cast-aside materials, including detergent containers, toilet tissue rolls, medication bottles, straws, pipe, cleaners, soda bottles, and so much more.
“All three of our neighborhoods (independent living, assisted living, and memory care) are represented,” says Joyce Coleman, Life Enrichment Director at The 501. “We are very proud of the finished project!”
Charming touches include a pair of toilet paper roll residents enjoying their balcony, medicine bottle residents out for a walk, a cardboard box community bus, and Lindenwold Castle’s egg carton turrets.
Two other communities — Artisan at Hudson, in Hudson, Ma., and Village Crossing at Worman’s Mill, in Frederick, Md. — participated in the Recycling Challenge.
Artisan at Hudson recreated the community’s logo on a canvas using only plastic bottle caps, created three different types of plastic-bottle planters, and designed a trash bin made from plastic bottles lined with a biodegradable corn starch bag.
Village Crossing at Worman’s Mill won the competition by creating wine bottle wind chimes, which the community is selling to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Association’s Walk to End Alzheimer’s in October.
To learn more about SageLife’s senior living communities, visit www.sagelife.com.
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