From the Eco Warriors 02.03.2023

As well as busily getting ready for Earth Week 2024 AND planting lots of new herbs outside the cafe to put in our tasty lunches, the Eco Warriors this week have been volunteering in the community too…

On 25th of February, we volunteered on the Happy Plastics Projected hosted by Ripple at TAME. 14 students came and we had at least one from each year group (year 5-12).

During our time there, we had an opportunity to experience a variety of activities. Firstly, we sorted out plastics that had been brought to the centre into different categories. Most of the plastic was Type 2, for example, shampoo bottles and juice boxes. There were also others which were Type 1,3,4 and 5. After sorting out all the plastics into different categories, we separated into 3 groups with 3 different tasks to do.  

The first station was the peeling/removing tags section where we removed the stickers on the material by heating it up then peeling it. The second station was the cutting station which was, for the majority, the hardest station as most of the plastic was very hard to cut through even though we had large scissors. We had to cut the pieces down into medium-sized pieces which could then be put into the machine to make it into tiny pieces. The third station is where we get to try and use the machine which grinds the plastic into tiny pieces and can then be put in another machine then transforms it into a material to make new products. The machine would sometimes overheat as well, so we also got to do the colour sorting in large bags to be prepared to put into the machinery. 

This was a wonderful experience at TAME and we hope that more people will be able to join in the future!

Fion, 8S