Biodesign Challenge 2023 award recipient for Outstanding Social Critique.

Colores del Rio is a bioregional community engagement tool made of agricultural waste, sourced locally. It asks a California agriculture community in the Salinas area to look closer at the food systems they are acutely affected by and to show how local landfill-bound food waste can be a viable bio-material. This community engagement tool is biodesign-activism in response to local systemic issues involving the monoculture industry, the Salinas River-watershed, and impacted communities. Colores del Rio combines community engagement and a human-environment relationship through citizen-science. With this environmental justice tool, made of disposed red cabbage, youth become stewards of water and land, discovering what pH-colors emerge when we place Colores del Rio in a nearby body of water, having an impact on contaminated water. It invites the next generation of youth leadership to actively participate in biodesign, citizen science, and environmental justice, giving local food waste another life that is regenerative and supportive of people and ecosystems.

Colores del Rio originated within a California College of the Arts Biodesign class and continues as a collaboration with Xinampa (non-profit organization in Salinas), and Mount Toro High School’s science department.