Dirty Danger

The Dirty Danger project has produced an engaging and educational experience for passersby, via Philadelphia’s Big Belly solar trash compactors. Eight designs, created by Trash Academy youth with artist Eva Wŏ and environmental educator Ciara Williams, feature mystical animals camouflaged in vibrant, abstracted natural environments. Lurking in the background, photorealistic soda bottles, snack bags, and other trash items encourage us to think about where our litter may end up if we don’t properly dispose of it.

The eight designs were printed and installed as vinyl wraps on fifty trash compactors located in the vicinity of Broad & Snyder Streets and along Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia and along 52nd Street in West Philadelphia.

What is Trash Academy?

Earning it the title of ‘Filthadelphia’, the trash and litter that defaces the streets of Philadelphia is an apt metaphor for the systematic devaluation of underserved communities. Litter and dumping is both an environmental and racial justice issue, disproportionately affecting black, brown and marginalized communities. In response to this pervasive injustice, Trash Academy, is an effective intergenerational “collaboratory” co-led by engaged residents of diverse backgrounds, artists, activists, and organizers to address the issues of trash.

Collectively, Trash Academy designs projects that deepen people’s understanding of litter, consumption, and the wastestream. Through innovative, creative methodologies the projects:

-strengthen the movement for environmental justice
-campaign for specific policy and/or regulatory change
-divert materials from incinerators, landfills and accelerate circularity

Trash Academy educates through participatory research, teach-ins, and workshops, and uses games and public art as a disarming point of entry to build campaigns that drive proactive transformation of the waste stream to reduce its impact on people in specific highly impacted neighborhoods here in Philadelphia and the planet at large.