Young Tobolsk residents were taught to make useful items from recycled plastic
17 may 2021
A Recycling Workshop at the Tobolsk Quantorium, a children's technological park, became home to a series of educational master classes on plastics recycling. This is being done with the support of SIBUR as part of the Formula for Good Deeds, the company’s social investment program. Hundreds of Tobolsk residents attended the master classes over the course of two days. The educational master classes will be continued throughout 2021.
These practice-focused classes are designed to help foster Tobolsk residents’ environmental culture and awareness. The Recycling Workshop has been rigged up with all necessary equipment for conducting the full cycle of polymer recycling. The plastic recycling conveyor assembly is made up of two pieces of machinery: a shredder and a thermoforming machine. The former shreds plastic bottle caps while the latter melts recyclable materials and makes new finished products.
Prior to the start of the practical part of the master class, experts from Zerowaste.lab, a creative research laboratory, taught the participants how to correctly identify different types of plastic and recyclable raw materials while introducing them to the equipment used in the production process. Following that, the experts walked Tobolsk’s junior residents through a full cycle of recycling turning used plastic caps into a small-sized mug. At first, the participants of the master class sorted out the plastic, and then shredded it using the shredder, and loaded it into the thermoforming machine to produce a finished mug.
The machine installed at the Quantorium only works with bottle caps, Elena Titova, host of Zerowaste.lab’s educational master classes, explained. This is a demonstration version, hence the miniature size of the finished products (a mug, a saucer, a spoon). The items thus made can be used at home: one can fill them with liquids or use them as containers for storing things. While it takes this machine two to three minutes to complete the plastics recycling process, an industrial version is capable of churning out several dozens of products in a minute.
The master class at the children's technology park Quantorium-Tobolsk ended with a quiz about the environment.
It is important that the master classes were focused on hands-on experience. Thanks to this approach, teachers from Quantorium-Tobolsk and attending students could not just observe all the stages of plastic recycling including sorting, crushing, melting, and final molding into an item, but could also try to make a new product with their own hands. Besides, the attendees of the master classes arrived at a realization that recycling offers unlimited opportunities and that each of us can make a contribution to preserving the environment, Maxim Viltsan, Director of the Quantorium-Tobolsk Children's Technopark, noted.
This was the first time we attended a master class like this one. Everything was very interesting and educational and we learned a lot about the history of plastics. It was very useful to observe the recycling process with our own eyes. One won't be able to see something like this anywhere else in Tobolsk, School 17 students Polina and Varvara Kormann, participants of the master class, noted.
The Recycling Workshop is a comprehensive environmental project aimed at developing a system of separate plastic waste collection and recycling. The first recycling workshop was opened in Tobolsk in December 2020, and three more similar ones will be set up in Dzerzhinsk, Nizhnevartovsk, and Perm throughout 2021. In Tobolsk, the project has been implemented by the Success Foundation with the support of SIBUR, by Tyumen Oblast’s regional administration, and by the city’s administration since 2020. Its goals include environmental education and developing a generally accepted view of plastics as a recycled raw material to be used for manufacturing new products. The project will focus on several activities: setting up recycling workshops in the company's areas of presence, holding ecological contests and other events needed to foster an eco-responsible culture. In early 2021, the All-Russian Ecological Contest #Iammakingacleancity was held under the auspices of the project with a view to drawing the attention of the younger generation to the issues of ecological development of society and the nation and to the need for developing a sustainable approach to managing natural resources. More than five thousand school students from 53 regions of Russia took part in the contest.
The master classes held in Tobolsk is the first educational event carried out as part of the Recycling Workshop project, Elena Belskaya, Head of ZapSibNeftekhim's Government Relations Department, notes. Our objective is not only to teach our city’s residents to make new products from plastics, but also to change their attitude toward this material in general. It is important to make sure that the resident of Tobolsk learn to view used bottles, caps, flasks, and other similar items made of plastic not as household waste, but as valuable recyclable materials that can be converted into a new useful product. Once this has happened, many residents will also be aware of their own daily global-scale contribution to protecting the environment that they make by sending their plastic consumption waste for recycling. We started off by arranging classes for schoolchildren, but in the long run such activities will be relevant for everyone: children, students, adults, and the older generation.