From turning a broken chair into an end table to making knick knack shelves from a pair of crutches, an environmental health class discovered creative ideas for recycling old items.

Janice Clark, professor of health science at Truman State University, encourages her students to think about National Recycling Day a little bit more than the average college student. Every fall in Clark’s HLTH 362 course, students are challenged with a “Second Life Project.” As part of Clark’s curriculum for the environmental health class, students not only give a second life to old products but also construct a paper to fully analyze the impact the project can make. “The Second Life Project is my original idea for a class project, and it’s been on the HLTH 362 schedule of course activities for the past five or more years,” Clark said. There are no restrictions for what products the students can use except for the minimal use of brand new products.