Story URL: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=179383
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Lauren Biron/MEDILL
Eric Masters, who upcycles discards into clocks, was surprised to find one of his favorite thrift stores out of business. The only item visible from the outside? A clock sitting on the windowsill.
My clock is also a cheese grater - Local upcycler turns trash into treasure
by Lauren Biron
Feb 23, 2011
Lauren Biron/MEDILL
In addition to household items such as Tupperware, shoes and dolls, Masters upcycles electronic items such as Simon games, calculators, and Big Mouth Billy Bass. A full selection of his clocks is available in his online store, IMOTIME, on Etsy.com.
Lauren Biron/MEDILL
Reactions to the clocks have been mostly positive - once people figure out they are looking at a clock. "I like that feeling, when someone says, 'I would never think of making a clock out of that,'” says Masters.
He rescues discards and upcycles - transforms - them into clocks. Tupperware, ice skates, games such as Operation and Simon, handheld Mattel football games, old radios, not-so-old radios, toasters, baby dolls, telephones, lawn flamingos and calculators all fall victim to what he calls “surgery.”
The grisly term refers to taking out the guts of something like a Simon game and inserting a clock mechanism before patching it up.
Masters started saving the environment in 2002, not knowing this would help him save himself.
When he and his Australian cattle dog, Pearl, clambered into his truck and struck out from Illinois for San Diego, all Masters wanted to do was escape the bad memories and start over somewhere fresh and warm.
Before Illinois, he lived and worked in Japan as a concierge for almost four years. But then his boyfriend, a pearl salesman, drowned. Masters returned to the U.S., moved back in with his parents and promptly fell apart.
“I was stuck in depression that was different and growing,” he said. “I was sitting around and not being able to do anything in my life.”
So Masters moved to Southern California. There, he made his first clock from an old metal cake cover after seeing a similar project on Martha Stewart’s show.
“I love to hate Martha Stewart, although I do use her recipes now and then,” Masters said. “So it’s a little embarrassing that she’s been my inspiration.”
In 2008, Masters moved back to Wilmette to be with friends and family. There, he rummaged through thrift stores and garage sales, finding old items that might otherwise wind up in trash heaps or incinerators.
He sells his clocks online at eBay and Etsy, a site for handmade arts and crafts. For around $30, anyone can own a clock made from an old saw blade or timer.
“I find things that are done with their first life, so they’re having a renaissance,” he said. “I give them second life.”
Masters is a part of the increasingly well-known trend of “upcycling.” Instead of recycling goods back into their component parts for reuse in the same product, upcyclers turn old materials into something new. Examples include turning secondhand wool sweaters into wool gloves or, in Master’s case, turning a Big Mouth Billy Bass into a clock.
“I don’t think my things are better than what they originally were,” Masters said. “It’s certainly artsier. It’s certainly cooler. And different. A dirty cheese grater with rust – most people wouldn’t use it. But as a clock, I hope people will.”
Masters upcycles all sorts of materials – but the most important aspect may be reusing old electronics and saving them from the growing stream of electronic waste, or e-waste.
According to the most recent figures from the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans produced more than 3 million tons of e-waste in 2008 alone. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates 40 million tons is generated annually worldwide.
E-waste is the fastest growing trash stream, but not even 14 percent is recovered for recycling, compared to 33 percent for all municipal waste.
Masters sticks to simple electronics such as calculators and games, keeping their recognizable form. He avoids making clocks out of computers and televisions, but he may want to start. The EPA estimates 112,000 computers are discarded every day in the U.S., part of 400 million units of electronics including printers, DVD players and VCRs that are disposed of every year.
Other artists throughout the U.S. have started upcycling some of this massive collection of computer parts. Joel and Debby Arem of Maryland emphasize the delicate lines of circuitry found in electronics, turning circuit boards into everything from clocks and clipboards to bookmarks and pencil holders. Their office supplies sit in the Smart Home at the Museum of Science and Industry.
“We started long before there was such a thing as green,” Arem said. In 1991, he began stockpiling circuit board prototypes that he says were destined for incinerators.
“They all would have been burned,” he said. “Absolutely burned.”
More than 80 percent of e-waste winds up in incinerators or landfills. In 2012, Illinois will implement a ban on dumping computers, laptops, televisions, monitors and printers into landfills. According to the EPA, New York and Illinois are the only two states that have e-waste laws for recycling those five items as well as faxes, scanners, keyboard mice, MP3 players, DVD players, VCRs, cell phones and game consoles.
“The amount of material coming under proper management is increasing,” said Chris Newman of the EPA. He added that while much recycling is done in the U.S., large portions are still exported when facilities at home can’t process the materials. There is no smelter capable of processing circuit boards in the U.S.
Though Newman couldn’t say whether the EPA preferred recycling or upcycling, he did have a plaque sitting in his office – made from a computer circuit board.
Regardless of their preference, green-minded people everywhere can count on more e-waste to deal with in the coming years. The demand for the hottest gadget and rapidly improving technologies means shorter and shorter life spans for devices.
Perhaps the solution is in recycling the electronics into component parts, but perhaps it is also in the hands of artists like Masters and Arem who give technology a second lease on life.
“The clocks, for whatever reason, have given me purpose,” Masters said. “I’m not just wasting things. I’m creating things out of things I choose to make reborn.”
