In precious plastics this semester we learnt the importance of recycling and reducing the amount of plastic sent to landfill. We mostly recycled lids and milk bottles using 3 types of plastic Type 2,(HDPE) Type 4 (LDPE) and Type 5 (PP). There are many different types of plastic but it is only safe to recycle those types in our classroom, you can tell what type of plastic it is because it is written on the lid in a triangle or spelled out. We turned them into a variety of things from keychains, clipboards, pots and pens (You can replace the ink cartridge in the pens so you don’t have to throw them out). Then we sold them at a market hoping to keep that plastic out of the landfill.

The Process to Create

In order to produce such a well-crafted beautifully-designed variety of products we had to start by sorting the plastic. This was fun at first but if you do it for long enough you come to learn how slow it can be. Not only does it have to be sorted by colour but by type as well. this can take a long time because you need many lids to be able to create many things. It’s important to sort by colour as well so you don’t end up with a vomit of a rainbow. The next phase is to shred the plastic so they become easier to melt and use in different ways but beware not to shred them all as a few solid lids and bring a piece together. after shredding them down you are finally able to produce a product. Depending on what you are creating you use the shreds and lids in different ways. If you want to learn more about that you can copy the link https://community.preciousplastic.com/academy/create or watch the video

Collaboration

We worked closely with each other in different parts of the process to help streamline the process in order to maximise the amount of time we had to create our products. Not only that we also spent a few periods with the year 2s to teach them about precious plastic and get them involved in the creation of amazing products. We spent some time with them and they helped to sort the lids as they learnt about the different kinds of plastic. They also helped with shredding and learned why did this and altogether they had a great time and so did we. To introduce the topics to year 1s we asked what keychain they would like and created it for them to give them an idea of what we can create in precious plastic. Being year 1s decided on the design of Pikachu so that is what we created.

In the end, this was a great InnovateED filled with hands-on learning and creating. We had excitement, fun and bliss doing this and if you ever get the opportunity to do this yourself I would encourage you to do so.