Necessity is the Mother of Recycling

The world of clay is being hit with the same shortages that the rest of the world is having. I went to buy 500lbs for my next class session and was met with ‘Sorry, it’s out of stock. We don’t know when we’ll get any and it will be rationed to 100lbs per customer once it gets delivered.’ Wow!!
A quick look at their out-of-stock board displayed about 30 names compared to the four names listed last time. I hadn’t considered that all the personnel shortages would make a difference in making clay. But, of course it does!

So, what to do? I have four bags of our usual white clay left in my studio and a couple more bags that I had reclaimed from scraps. But, that is not nearly enough.
Then I remembered Cindie’s delivery! When the very first wave of Covid hit and classes closed down everywhere, a friend of mine dropped off a bunch of bags of partially used clay that were going to get thrown out. It’s now a big pile of hardened, mystery clays. But, I’m hopeful. I think I spotted some B-mix in amongst them and I’m starting to reclaim whatever I can find.

I figured this will be a great opportunity for my students to learn how clay can be recycled! They already know about saving the scraps, and now they’ll learn to turn them back into usable clay. We’ll use what we have and who knows, it may even turn out to be more interesting than usual!

You know the old saying, ‘Necessity is the mother of recycling!’