In celebration of our Issue 12: Upcycle, we invited 826 Valencia, a youth writing center located in San Francisco, to submit writing and poetry about trash in all its forms.

In turn, the young writers of 826 Valencia decided to write about the Pacific Garbage Patch, “trash” versus “treasure”, the life of a plastic water bottle, and more. We hope you enjoy their writing, and that it expands the way you think about trash in your everyday life. If you’d like, try writing your own responses to their prompts!

Illustoria Magazine is the official publication of the International Alliance of Youth Writing Centers, an informal network of organizations around the world who share the belief that young people need places where they can write and be heard and have their voices polished, published, and amplified. In every issue of Illustoria, students from these centers contribute their own writing and art and conduct interviews with the artists and others profiled in these pages. The Alliance’s goal is to get more young people published and to let readers of all ages see just how much young people have to say.

Prompt #1: The Pacific Garbage Patch is an area in the ocean covered by garbage that’s as wide as 7.7 million square miles in the Pacific Ocean. What are ways you would try to clean up the mess?

Brandon Jimenez, Age 11
A way I could clean the mess is by taking a submarine with two large vacuums. They would be really long and waterproof. It would weigh 90 pounds and it would hold a million pieces of garbage on the back. The garbage will go to the dumpster which would be really big and would hold more than a trillion pieces of trash. That’s more than a million bags full of trash. In the dumpster there would be a machine you could control the vacuums with a remote.

Yahir Agulano, Age 12
The ocean is huge, so is the whole garbage patch. Whole seas to creeks, garbage is ruining our nature, our coral reefs, our air, and our beautiful beaches. We need to think fast, and we did a bit from huge nets to things vacuuming water for garbage. Here’s what I’ve come up with as one of those thinkers with an imagination. Using the immense amount of garbage, I would recycle them and create artificial islands, 200-800 miles apart from each other. Inside them would be a small base with a net attached to all the islands to catch more garbage. A port would be in them to get garbage and transport them inland for sale to huge industries that are focused on creating recycled products. Once the mission of destroying the evil garbage patch is complete, we could sell these artificial islands to scientist based organizations like the MMC, different governments could create naval bases, telecommunications companies and wealthy people could put their names next to the effort and nature, or should I say in the middle of it. It could even be used as places for future resorts. Profitable, but imaginative. I wish this could work.

Thomas McVey, Age 15
The solution to this problem would really depend on the type of garbage. The most obvious solution, using nets, would not work due to the destruction it would have to the fish population and habitat. As the waste is mostly plastic, the simplest way to do it is to take a large ship and have people grab the plastic out of the water. It would require a lot of volunteers or government paid workers, but to clean 7.7 million square miles it is most likely worth it. If the 88,000 tons of garbage is too much to store, we could jettison loads of plastic to the moon, because burning it would create too much CO₂ emission. According to Space.com, their newest ship can carry 50.5 tons per flight which would take about 1500 flights from here to the moon. This would cost a total of about 176,000,000,000 dollars according to Elon Musk’s mile per pound estimates. The fuel for the flights would be quite expensive as well, but 88,000 tons of plastic polluting the planet has to be moved.

Hardwin Canul-Camara, Age 13
Something that could help people clean the ocean is by using nets to fish out the trash or a machine that takes in the trash while letting the water go. It would have huge storage and would float on top of the water. Even if there is 7.7 million square miles, it could still help a little bit.

Maya Dominguez, Age 9

“Trash, Don’t Go into the Ocean!”

Once upon a time, I walked near a street and saw trash near the ocean on the beach. I went and picked up the trash and I bought a pizza and made a sign that said “Pick Up the Trash for Pizza.” Many people picked up trash for pizza and they brought three or four pieces of trash which made the beach all clean. After I went to the city and saw lots more trash than on the beach, so I said on another sign “Free Starbucks” and many more people picked up more trash. As people were picking up trash, I asked one of them, “Have you ever tried saving a plant?”

The person said, “I have, but for me it doesn’t work.”

“Oh,” I said.

Alondra Margarito Reyes, Age 9
One way that I could help clean the Pacific Ocean is by making a community. This is a good idea because this work needs many people not just one. I think that it is a good idea because if we don’t help, the animals that live there will die. Another reason is the garbage in the ocean is affecting animals because animals think the garbage is food.

Daniel Margarita Reyes, Age 9
I would tell people not to throw garbage away and clean. Then I would start cleaning and get some people to help me. After I would call the garbage people and I would throw away the trash. Then I would clean up using a net to more trash faster.

Liliana Romero, Age 8
I think that a way to clean the ocean from pollution is by creating teams to collect the trash. I think this because we can’t do this by ourselves because there is too much trash in the ocean for one person all by his/herself. I think this will help because you know what they say, Teamwork makes the Dreamwork!

Karen Santiago, Age 11
One idea I have to fix the garbage is pay people money to go pick up the garbage. Another idea is to make a robot or a machine to pick out all the garbage and then sort it out into different piles of garbage, recycling, and compost. Lastly, I would take out the fish and put them in another area.

D’Angelo Ruiz, Age 11
If I had a choice to get rid of the huge trash cans, I would just throw myself into the Sun. But for real, I would just send the trash to the Sun and I’ll come back to my flat earth. It’s the only way because if we burn it, global warming will get worse. If we blow it up, it will cause a lot of damage. And if we nuke it, we are all going to die. Have a nice life while you can.

Angel Zea, Age 9
I would take a helicopter with those really big bags and I would swoop down to the trash, come back up, and then go to the nearest space station and then put it in a rocket ship. Then I would send it to Mars and redo everything until there’s no more trash. Then when Mars is full of trash I would go to Venus.

Christian Zea, Age 13
Some ways that I would try to clean the ocean would be by gathering a bunch of people together and getting boats and little submarines to collect trash from the deep bottom of the ocean. That one would be one of the ways that I would try. My second option would be getting really big nets/claws and collecting trash like that until we get most of the ocean clean. My third way would be by putting a big filter that would collect all the trash in the ocean and send it to a factory that destroys or burns trash.

Prompt #2: One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Is there something that others might see as trash, but is something you value?

Zara Rafael-Gonzalez, Age 10
One time I made a binder clip into a slingshot. At first it seemed like an ordinary, old, useless binder clip, but when I tied a rubber band around two paper clips, Bam! I got a slingshot (I don’t value binder clips, I just think it’s cool to change an ordinary thing into a cool thing).

Mario Lopez, Age 10
“The Two Men and the Books”

Once there was a man that had a lot of books. He thought they were all trash because he now liked reading on technology. Another person hated technology but loved to read real books. One day, the man that loved books passed by and saw the trash and shouted, “Yes!”

He was so happy because he found a book that he always wanted. He got the book for zero dollars and it was a hundred percent off. The guy who didn’t like books was happy because now he had more space for more technology and more space in his trash can. Sometimes the things that you think are trash can be valuable to another person.

Daniel Margarito Reyes, Age 9
“The Rich Man and the Poor Man”

Once there was a man who was going to destroy a lot of houses he had because he bought them all, but the man thought they were trash compared to his mansion. Then, there was a poor man that had no money to buy a house who saw the houses that were going to be destroyed. The poor man asked the rich man if he could have a house and the rich man said “Yes,” because he didn’t need them. The poor man was excited because he didn’t have to spend money on a house. The poor man lived happily.

D’Angelo Ruiz, Age 11
I have a broken controller in my room for some reason. I guess people will call it trash, but I could just sell it on ebay and say it works. Big brain. Once my friend asked me about why I have it. Also, one thing that is bad is that I can’t return it. I’m probably going to throw it away and it will just be destroyed.

Viviana Suazo, Age 11
Something that’s trash to my mom is my old plushy of dumbo that I got on a Black Friday when I was very little. My mom has been telling me to put it away and throw it away which I’m offended by. I kept it because it was the very first plushy I ever got.

Prompt #3: Write about the life of a plastic water bottle that someone just littered on the street. Think about how it might affect sea animals and the planet.

Emily Rodriguez, Age 7
Someone littered with a water bottle. Then the water bottle got up and explored the city. He saw a coffee shop and a bookstore and a Lego shop. Then he got picked up by a person and got thrown away. The End.

Neryssa Zapien, Age 10
(Me) Imagine you throw a plastic water bottle in the sea! Well, then it starts to get filled, and filled, and filled. Then you won’t have an ocean anymore, you will have a plastic water bottle ocean. Think about the animals, they can die because they don’t have water to breathe just like how we can die without oxygen. We will have no water and the animals will eat the plastic and die.

(Animals) So you are throwing trash in the sea. We animals can die. We will have no water to survive. We can even eat the plastic and go bye-bye.

Category of Her Own: Gabriela Trujillo, Age 13

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Every single day we buy things with the money we have earned from working or we received from our parents. It just might seem easy for us to buy whatever we’d like, yet thousands and thousands of people call the streets their home. They are often alone without a family and some are lost to drugs, but they all need food and water to survive. Food is tasty but when it becomes a daily part of our lives, we take for granted when we throw it away. When you start, you waste food when you don’t finish dinner or waste water taking a bath or brushing your teeth, have you ever thought of how your actions could affect others? How the food you didn’t feel like eating anymore could save thousands of people from dying from hunger everyday? Something you might take for granted like a home, food, water, clothes, and a family is a treasure for someone else in this world.

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The sweet aroma of those beautiful diverse flowers enlightened my spirit. Each and every one of them a different color. Even though they had their similarities and differences, they still cared for each other. It was the beginning of fall and the leaves were colored in with warm vibrant colors, fluttering in the air like butterflies dancing gracefully in the roaring wind. The wind was strong and fierce, whispering in my ears and screaming in my face for help. It desperately whined for help with a soft, faint, and powerless voice. The very wind itself seemed to gasp for air. It finally came to a stop, leaving behind a plain, empty quietness that took over. There was no sign of life other than these atrocious, heartless humans. The world seemed as if it had lost its soul as the senses and every single aspect of nature had vanished, where only the tenderly feeling of sorrow resided. Global Warming had reached its peak, and the waste humans created everyday polluted the beautiful ocean. It was now not a question that humans destroyed the world with inhumane acts now that the world was on the verge of breaking down. Just how many years, decades, and centuries later people wanted to take action after seeing and realizing that they would have nowhere to go if this would break down. It was too late now and we had created an irreversible...every time at an alarming rate. But it’s not too late for the humans in the 21st century to make a change. Yes, global warming is indeed growing at an alarming rate every time we use vehicles such as cars or buses, and the cows we consume create more and more global warming. Yet all the factories on our planet are creating pollution as well as global warming. We are on the verge of creating irreversible damage and we have a list of endless problems we have created. We don’t have time because we need to make changes and put a stop to this NOW! Our beautiful Earth is marvelous and is our source of life so it’s worth fighting for. It’s the only home we have and there is other that could replace it. At times, we might not notice how important our actions are or realize how badly we are wounding our planet. So we become careless and discard trash wherever we like, but Earth is not a dumping ground. It’s something full of living things, not just us. If you could take a second or a minute of your day to think about how your innovative ideas could make a change, that would be amazing. This is our planet, and it’s definitely worth fighting for.