ARROWSIC, Maine — A new plastic art sculpture in Sagadahoc County is grabbing the attention of everyone who drives by the Arrowsic Town Office.
The art sculpture was made by two teenagers, Charli Ware and Ren Kauffunger. They are also close friends, since they were just two years old.
A group of people, along with Ware and Kauffunger, grabbed more than 20 bags filled with trash from the Arrowsic clam flats and surrounding marsh areas.
The goal was to show how big of a problem trash is to our environment, and how a lot of this ocean debris never goes away.
The teens also say they've noticed more trash flowing through the Kennebec River over the years.
"Everything that you do will have some type of impact on others or just the environment itself, and I think people need to start thinking about that more so it doesn't become a bigger problem, which it already is," Ware said.
"If we hadn't cleaned all of this up it would still be out there in the ocean, and maybe if you throw a bottle out there you might not think of it because it's not in front of you again, but this sculpture really shows that it is out there and it's just floating around. You can't see it, but it's still there causing problems and destroying the environment slowly," Kauffunger said.
The teens also hope this inspires people to pick up trash wherever they see it, to help keep Maine and its coastal waters as beautiful as they are.
The sculpture includes things like bottles, tires, ropes, flip-flops, hard hats, and all sorts of plastics.
"To see that all of this is there, it's a relatively small marsh when you really look at it in comparison to everything else in the island, and to think that all of this is from such a small area and there's so much more out there that needs to be worked on, it's pretty sad," Kauffenger said.
"It's sad because there was so much extra trash, this doesn't even capture the amount that we found. There were more bags that we had collected, too, and as Ren said, the area was small, there are much bigger marshes nearby that we hadn't cleaned and the area that we cleaned, it was small, but it took so long to get this much," Ware expressed.
If you would like to see the art sculpture for yourself, it's located right outside the Arrowsic Town Office.
To learn more about the teens' project, read their statement below.