Georgia Meyerowitz – Year 11

Lucia Meyer – Year 11

Keeping soft plastics out of landfill

Emanuel School would like to officially introduce our new soft plastics bin!
The basketball court welcomes a shiny new bin that allows a new sustainable means of disposing rubbish, reflecting Emanuel’s values of preserving the environment. The purpose of this bin is to collect soft plastics that will be collected from school and recycled and repurposed into items such as heavy-duty outdoor plastic furniture and roads. We are very proud to integrate this sustainable practice.

Designing and creating the new soft plastics bin was a fun process. The idea of designing a new bin sounded exciting, so when Mrs Starkey asked for volunteers, we jumped at the opportunity. Ourselves – Georgia and Lucia – as well as Rebecca Salamon and Zarah Gorelik (Year 7) all took part in designing and creating the bin. We all met together in the Design Lab to first discuss how we will design the bin. We began brainstorming and were all open to each other’s ideas. We collaborated so well as a team, eventually finalising the design. After spray painting a base onto the bin, we created stencils with help from Mr Peacock and Crystal Rimmer. The process of creating the stencils was quite extensive, so while waiting for them, we began painting the details of our design onto the bin. When the stencils were finished, we spray painted them on and the bin was finally finished. The process was really enjoyable, and we are all very happy with the result. 

To date the students have done a wonderful job of disposing of their soft plastic waste correctly and we thank students and staff for their ongoing support to keep feeding our bin with the unavoidable soft plastic we often come across.