Confrontation Point sponsors Ichthus recycling for fourth year

Keili Herron ate out of the trash all day Friday. The 14-year-old was one of 16 youth from Huntley, Ill., focused on recycling efforts at the Ichthus festival in Wilmore. She found untouched doughnuts and pizza in the trash in the morning.

“It’s actually not that bad; it tastes just like real food once you get past the fact that there’s dirt on it,” Herron said.

The group was on a week-long mission trip with Wilmore-based Confrontation Point Ministries, which has coordinated recycling efforts at Ichthus for four years.

As in years past, festival attendees could write their names and phone numbers on bottles before tossing them into a giant bottle-shaped enclosure with the chance of winning an autographed guitar if their name is pulled. Zach Ott from Huntley also helped last year and said the enclosure filled up within a day this year after taking the whole festival last year; some even brought bags of bottles from home.

Other teenagers from the group dug through trash bins to find recyclable bottles. They even got innovative with recycling, using some recovered materials from Confrontation Point’s tornado relief to make an impromptu “recycling band.”

“We’ve been using the stuff they got from tornado relief, and we each grabbed a piece and had a whole group set up just playing instruments; it was great,” 16-year-old Kira Frendreis said.

The group spent the first part of their week cleaning up campground areas in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

“The main message of this is that God’s given us this wonderful planet, and all we have to do is take care of it,” Frendreis said. “We’re not really doing that great a job of that, so we’re trying to teach people and be good examples.”

For more information on Confrontation Point Ministries, visit www.confrontationpoint.org.