Light a Star: For a Green Christmas

CEBU, Philippines - O what will you do with your candy wrappers and used compact discs?

This year’s Light a Star, The FREEMAN’s on-the-spot lantern-making contest, featured several smart ways on how to creatively turn trash to an art piece. Participated by various elementary and high school students all over the region, the competition produced ingenious lanterns that are basically out-of-the-box.

Mohon National High School’s winning entry, for example, is a nifty rendition of a Capiz-made parol with the CDs uniformly cut, utilizing the backside of the compact disk to achieve the rainbow, shiny effect. Calling their bamboo lantern framework as “eclipse,” the students painstakingly glued each piece evenly on the skeleton, forming rows upon rows of fish-like scales. This understandably screams putting ones best green foot forward by saving those used CDs and turning them from blah to fab Christmas décor.

Meanwhile, the pupils of Agus Elementary School outwit other nine finalists with their Morning Star (a 10-ray star) adorned with candy wrappers. These wrappers form a kaleidoscope colors of lime green, pink, orange, lilac, red and yellow, tidily stuck all over, creating a unique, presentable eco-friendly lantern. So why dispose all those wrappers when you can create a masterpiece?

Here’s to a GREEN Christmas!