Can Plastic Be Fantastic? When You Make Drums Out Of It, Definitely!

The attached video, which I recommend that you start watching from the :55 mark (and on), depicts a musician playing a traditional African Djembe drum. That alone would be interesting, but what really makes his performance stand out is the fact that his handmade drum is created with reclaimed plastic bags plucked from the landscape around him.

The Djembe drum -- a name which literally translates into "everyone gather together," is traditionally made out of hollowed-out hardwood trees covered with goat, antelope, zebra, deer, or calfskin. Not exactly green considering that our trees do more for us alive (filtering our air and generating oxygen in these greenhouse-heavy times) than they would in most other applications. Um, ditto for the animals...it would be nice to just leave them alone so that they can roam freely and graze to their heart's content.

Well, "La victoire sur les sachets" (victory on the plastic bags) is a perfect example of human ingenuity in action. This project demonstrates how a cultural object can take on life without tapping into valuable and precious natural resources. Instead, trash can become a commodity, a concept that has been demonstrated with great brilliance by such companies as Plakkies, TerraCycle and English Retreads.

In this case, the entire metamophosis from bag(s)-to-drum is depicted via brief clips as a Djembe drummer rhythmically provides the soundtrack. Normally, 20 tons of wood would be used to create 2,000 Djembe drums, but instead, 20 tons of plastic bags have jumped in to save the day (and a whole lot of trees in the process). Simply marvelous!!