After spending the past few weeks collecting trash, local schools are finally able to show off their hard work in a creative way. 

Garbage-derived art can now be seen at the Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery for the next little while. The artworks were created by high school and elementary school students from Moose Jaw and Caronport as part of the annual Global Warning event.

Students and teachers attended the awards ceremony on Thursday at the art gallery, and certificates were handed out in various categories. 

"When the kids came in today they all ran into their art piece and was super excited about it. I think it's a good thing, them getting to see that their work is appreciated," explained Nikola Orescanin, a Grade 11 student at Peacock Collegiate and Youth Advisory Committee member. "For us, we really care about global warming and not littering and to have little kids in elementary school work on these art pieces, it shows that they care and then they grow up to care too. It's kind of like putting the idea of good disposal of garbage in their heads and it helps for the future."

The Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) organized the entire event this year, with help from the AXIS committee who was a partner in establishing the tradition. 

"This is something different that we don't get to do," said Grace Kiefer from Vanier Collegiate, whose art piece is now on display. "It shows us that there is a lot of garbage and a lot of it can be reused."

One of the schools at the awards ceremony was École St. Margaret's, and they took home the title of Junior Best Overall. 

"École St. Margaret students were very excited to participate in the 5th Annual Global Warning Initiative. Students from Grade 1 to Grade 8 collected approximately 350 lbs of garbage around the St. Margaret’s neighbourhood.
Students from Kindergarten through Grade 6 then began work using the found items to create a sea turtle after being inspired by a book called The Brave Little Turtle, by Gill McBarnet.
The story describes the life journey of a sea turtle that becomes entangled in a piece of plastic garbage and is unsuccessful in removing the plastic itself or with the help of its sea friends. In the end, the turtle is freed with the help of “little humans” who “were sad and ashamed to think that such carelessness (was) hurting many sea creatures.”

The art project came together very quickly, with a team of excited and creative students."

Taking over the 5th annual Global Warning event was a perfect fit for the YAC committee as they've spent the past few years being strong advocates in our city to implement more environmentally conscious strategies, such as hoping to help the city make a move away from plastic bags. 

"We don't want the garbage on our streets. We want it to be disposed of in a proper way. To create something out of that using people's creative abilities, it has a lot of potential,

it has a lot of potential to become a community spread event that people can take part in and participate in. It really makes us happy when we receive all these art pieces," said Grade 12 student at Central Collegiate and YAC member Lucas Dyck.  

Now that the Global Warning Awards have been running for a few years and some of the YAC members will be returning next year, Dyck says their hope is to have the 6th annual bigger and better, as well as extending the invitation to participate even further. 

"We hope that over the next few years this is going to gain even more popularity. We really want to push the fact that we want all schools doing this, we want community groups to be doing this, maybe even private places can submit art pieces as well. There's really no limits because when it comes to something like this when it's creating art out of garbage, we want as much garbage to be collected [as possible]."