A school in Lancashire rallied its students to help build an entirely recycled classroom out of 3000 plastic bottles.
There’s nothing better than a craft project to get you out of regular lessons in primary school, and it’s a bonus if you can help the environment at the same time.
Over the past year, pupils at St Mary’s RC Primary School in Accrington worked to transform two tonnes of recycled plastic into ‘eco bricks’, which were then used to construct the structures in their outdoor classroom.
Check out the brilliant initiative here:
With the help of the community students collected waste such as sweet wrappers, cellophane and plastic bags, and packed them into milk cartons and two litre bottles to form the solid ‘bricks’.
The bricks were then compiled to form a reading area, chairs, tables and even a hut, allowing the kids to enjoy their lessons outside in the sun.
Speaking of the project, headteacher Michael said:
So far the school, the community and the church have collected 3000 eco-bricks – that equates to two tonnes of plastic waste that would have just gone to landfill sites or possibly ended up in the oceans.
We’ve used it to create the structures you can see today which are exciting to the children and can be put to good use; mainly it’s educating the children about this plastic waste and what we can do to help the environment.
As well as having structures made from recycled products, the classroom has planters where the children can grow their own vegetables which can then be donated to food banks.
Michael continued:
The children are learning about the dangers of waste plastic going into the environment and learning new and innovative ways of how we can keep that going into the environment, but also looking at reducing their carbon footprint as well.
We are educating the children about these dangers of climate change.
With climate change a real threat to humanity’s future, everyone needs to do their part to help save the planet. Teaching children how to be environmentally conscious from a young age encourages them to maintain positive habits throughout their lives, hopefully creating a constant and long-lasting impact.
The headteacher added:
If they can grow up to be the next generation hopefully they’ll do something about [climate change] – a little bit more than we feel is being done by the government at the moment.
The recycled classroom is an excellent example of how kids can be educated about environmental issues in a hands-on and memorable way; hopefully the initiative will catch on in other schools!
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.