September 2007
Susan Mumford of Mumford Fine Art runs a gallery in Soho (www.mumfordfineart.net) where she practices the mantra reduce, reuse, recycle and the staff there know her as having eyes like a magpie for anything recyclable that winds up in the rubbish by ‘mistake’! Now this isn’t just some new-found fad for Susan, her romance with recycling streches back into her past, back to the golden era of 1996, Hendrix College, Arkansas, USofA…
…When it came to electing a Recycling Co-ordinator for her dorm Susan volunteered as noone else was willing, so she got the job of persuading students to dash their cans in the recycling bins by putting up signs and checking the bins were being used. Susan says there was a tipping point of truth when, ” I was standing in my dorm room, and a friend of my roommate was just finishing her soda. She leaned over to put the can in the rubbish but then paused, and all went into slow motion. She looked over at me, refrained from placing the can in the rubbish, and without saying a word walked about two feet over and placed it into the recycling bin. I knew then and there that I could have an impact on whether or not people recycled, and it was shortly thereafter that I was once and for all deemed the ‘Recycling Queen’.”
With another student she was able to roll out the scheme across campus and even formed the ‘Environmental Concerns Comittee’ which is still going to this day, and Susan now recycles paper, cardboard, cans, plastic, tins and glass from her stylish West-end gallery bringing a touch of class to the world of recycling.