Summer along the Oregon coast invokes images of gorgeous sunsets, tide pooling, rock hounding, toes wiggling in sand. Increasingly, though, ever-increasing ocean trash is flooding our sandy shores.

A recent report from DEQ states that during the pandemic, waste generated by Oregon households and businesses increased more than 5 percent. Without waste management infrastructure improvements, plastic waste entering the ocean from land is predicted to outweigh fish in the ocean by 2050.

These could feel like grim statistics for rural coastal communities with limited resources and increasing volumes of trash.

Jessi Just, the executive director of Heart of Cartm in Wheeler, Ore., takes another view. Just loves talking about trash, all kinds of trash. How can we reuse it, repair it and upcycle what is too often tossed in a dumpster? And more importantly, how can communities manage material in a healthier zero-waste way using discarded waste as raw material and resources for sustainable living?

As a kid in rural Missouri, Just’s family lived in a very old house always needing repair. Her dad would fix up furniture he got from the dump. Her mom was always bringing things home from the school where she worked when someone didn’t need the items anymore.

Remembering her youth, Just laughed. “They made being poor look good!” It wasn’t until Just went out into the real world that she realized just how much stuff gets tossed in the garbage and ends up in rivers and oceans.

After spending decades helping communities clean up waterways, at one point living and working on a trash barge in Mississippi, Just is now the executive director of Heart of Cartm.

Nestled in the hills along the Nehalem Bay, its mission is to raise awareness of the social and economic benefits gained when wasted materials are turned into resources. In addition to a reuse store and a repair cafe, Heart of Cartm created community events spotlighting alternatives to the landfill.

This year’s annual Trash Bash Arts Festival and the beloved Trashion Show drew hundreds of people from around the state. Music played. Models paraded the runway. One woman wore an intricate dress woven with hundreds of 3D glasses discarded from the solar eclipse. Another strutted in a flapper-esq dress made from used bingo cards. A man in an orange jumpsuit was festooned with bottle caps and washed ashore ocean buoys.

While some outfits took weeks to create, others were constructed on the spot using tangled Christmas ribbon and wrapping, tablecloths, and dozens of unused frames from an eyeglass shop.

“The audience participation was amazing,” Just said. “It was a fun way to celebrate transforming trash while also demonstrating that when you throw something away it will be here for a very long time.”

Beyond the fun and fundraising, Just wants to inspire people to consider how to use waste as a resource and think differently about their relationship to trash.

She hopes when people leave the festival, they remember an amazing thing someone did with a pair of eyeglasses or a plastic tablecloth. Perhaps before they dispose of something, they’ll consider somebody else who could use it or a way they could use it differently. On a larger scale she hopes people will consider the impact of America’s increasing throw-away culture by asking themselves before they buy something “Do I really need this?”

Just considers Wheeler’s small, rural location the perfect place to create a zero waste community.

“For us, recycling and upcycling items is almost a necessity. Most folks here don’t have a lot of money. We don’t have access to new things like other places do, so we share. It’s what I love most about rural life. When you’re getting rid of something you ask around if someone needs it. You don’t just automatically throw it away.”

To help people change their relationship to trash, Just believes people need to understand their role in the resource cycle of waste and see themselves within a larger context of community and connection.

Heart of Cartm’s upcoming event, Transforming Marine Debris Creative Retreat, offers a three-day immersive weekend of playful and creative environmental advocacy. Workshops will delve into the science of marine debris, complete a NOAA Marine Debris Monitoring Assessment shoreline survey, explore ocean trash as a creative prompt, use found object art as a transformative experience, and create a call to action.

Heart of Cartm’s vision of leading their community could sound like a lofty dream, but as increasing garbage floods coastal beaches and counties look to resolve the trash crisis, Just is finding partners across business sectors joining her vision to build community resourcefulness using zero waste principles to turn the tides of garbage in our seas and our landfills.

Visit Heart of Cartm at www.heartofcartm.org to find out more about its work and their Transforming Marine Debris Creative Retreat.

Carolyn Campbell, a former leadership & business coach, left city life four years ago to better understand the rural/city divide. Today she lives and works in rural regions to experience first-hand the issues these communities face and the innovative approaches to solving complex issues.