Student upcycles badminton birdies bound for landfill
Anya Yang with several BirdieUP Canada keychains. Photo courtesy: Anya Yang
By Patricia Lane & Anya Yang
Anya Yang turns badminton birdies bound for the landfill into useful works of art. This 17-year-old highschool student from Markham, Ontario, co-founded Birdie UP Canada to sell upcycled birdies. The group sends birdie proceeds to the World Wildlife Fund and other charities engaged in social and environmental justice. She is a 2025 winner of the I-SEA National Youth Climate Action Award.
Tell us about your project.
There are 339 million badminton players in the world, and all of us use multiple birdies. They have a very limited, useful life. Once they are broken or ruffled, they are thrown away. It is common at badminton tournaments for garbage tins to overflow with discarded birdies. Most are made of plastics, cork and other materials that do not decompose rapidly or at all.
Two of my friends, Christine Liang and Ivy Forchune, and I use discarded birdies and donated art materials to make attractive keychains we sell at various events. Last year, we raised almost $600, which we donated to the World Wildlife Fund. We run workshops teaching children to make them, and they take their own artwork home, helping to educate their families about the importance of reuse and upcycling.
Since we began in October 2024, we changed the basic design and tried out new decorative themes. We went from selling door-to-door to selling at events and found demand was strong enough to double the price. We started with just the three of us working in my basement, but now have dozens of volunteers. We are planning a video for social media showing how to make them.