Bushey Meads School, Hertfordshire, UK
Innovation for Change – Plastic Recycling Project
Support was provided for a project to involve as many students, parents and staff as possible in appreciating the need to recycle in order to protect the environment and reduce carbon footprints. The students learned about sustainability, closed-loop processes, and resources from waste. The students were trained to operate, run and maintain a plastic shredder and sheet heat press – in a cross-curricular project involving science, design and technology, business and humanities. Plastic waste was reduced and re-used.
We will be able to create our own sheet material from plastic collected within school and from student and staff homes. As plastic chairs become redundant, we can chip them and re-use the material.
Ashley Phillips, Teacher, Bushey Meads School
Can-Crushing Project
In 2009 Bushey Meads School in Hertfordshire was given the grant to enable Year 8 D&T students, their teachers, and parents – understand the economics of recycling. The project’s rationale:
… to make recycling economically viable the best way would be to get people to crush all plastic bottles and cans before they are collected at the kerbside. The recycling industry buys and sells recycled materials based on weight. The less air there is in plastic bottles and cans the more economically viable and higher volumes of recycled materials can be collected. The more plastic bottles and cans are recycled the less primary raw materials need to used up. The more we are able to encourage kids and their parents to recycle plastic bottle effectively the less likely the plastic has of getting into streams and end up in the ocean. A win-win solution.
Ashley Phillips, Teacher, Bushey Meads School