Have you ever cleaned your childhood closet and found a handful of trophies from sports you barely played?
One person did and is now asking the Reddit community what they should do with them. They don't want to throw them in the trash, but what could you possibly do with a participation trophy from middle school volleyball?
The original poster posed this question to the subreddit r/Anticonsumption asking, "Does anyone have some good crafty ways to reuse these old participation trophies? Or at least to recycle/reuse them?"
The post has an image of four old trophies from various sports. None of them look particularly valuable, and the poster doesn't seem to have much attachment to them.
With the proliferation of "participation trophies," especially in youth sports, many people find they have trophies that don't hold any special meaning to them. However, it is not so obvious how to dispose of these responsibly. Whether it's creative crafting or recycling them for a new generation, the Reddit community has a long list of suggestions of what to do with your old trophies.
Trophies are often made of many materials, making them difficult to recycle, and they can't be recycled at curbside recycling pickups. Trophies made of a mix of plastics and metals therefore end up in landfills, contributing to our solid waste problem. Keeping those trophies out of the trash helps our planet, so it's easy to see why the original poster wants to avoid the landfill.
The original poster is probably looking to get rid of those trophies considering they were "not a soccer or basketball star after all lol."
And it seems a good sense of humor is one of the best ways to upcycle trophies. One commenter used their old trophies as trophies for party games and costume contests. A comment in that thread added that with a new engraved plate, the reused trophies can be "really funny when there's a dude bowling on top." Another creative commenter suggested swapping the balls from the sports trophies with "teeny tiny gold skulls," to which a reply noted this could make "a tidy profit on Etsy."
Not all the comments take the upcycling so creatively. A couple of commenters mentioned some trophy shops will reuse parts of old trophies to make new trophies. Another suggested donating them to a thrift store so "people with low income who are team coaches etc will buy and re-plaque."
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