A plastics recycling workshop inaugurated in Tomsk with the support of SIBUR

24 february 2022

A plastics recycling workshop created within the framework of the "Recycling Workshop" project was officially inaugurated on February 24 in Tomsk’s Secondary School 16 (at 6, Beregovaya St). For local residents, this will be an opportunity to learn about the possibilities for recycling plastics and to handmake various items from recycled materials. The project is being implemented by Uspekh (Success), a Youth Initiatives Support Foundation, as part of SIBUR's Formula for Good Deeds social investment program.

The recycling workshop comes complete with all the necessary equipment needed for the full cycle of plastics recycling. The plastics recycling conveyor consists of two components: a shredder and a thermosetting molding machine. The former shreds plastic bottle caps, while the latter one melts recyclable materials and molds them into brand new finished products.

Maxim Savenkov, Tomsk’s Acting Deputy Mayor for Social Policy and Head of the Education Department at Tomsk’s City Administration, made the following welcoming speech at the inauguration ceremony:
It is very gratifying and very important for us to know that such well-equipped workshops start to find their way into our schools. It will give the younger generation a hands-on look into how circular economy works and maybe even serve as an impetus for their choosing a future profession and for opening up new career opportunities. I am confident that this kind of experience is very useful. I hope the project will keep going, and that many Tomsk-based schoolchildren will be able to take part in it.

Separate waste collection and recycling help us realize we can breathe a second life into the items that used to be considered useless garbage. This is important knowledge to have, especially for school students as they are the generation that in the future will be shaping the way their native city will be evolving. Someone who has just seen that plastics are not trash but a feedstock  material will be acting more responsibly when deciding what he throws in the trash can. We hope that the workshop will become one of Tomsk’s centers of environmental education, and its efforts will contribute to further enhancement of the local waste management culture, Leonid Fedotov, chief process engineer at SIBUR’s Tomsk-based Tomskneftekhim LLC, commented.

Elena Astrakhantseva, Principal of Tomsk’s Secondary School 16, also took part in the opening ceremony:
Environmental literacy stems from one’s hands-on experience, something that the students are getting by  attending our master classes and creating new items out recycled plastic. As they craft a spoon and a cup, the students start to see that instead of throwing away those plastic caps they should put them in a container, take them to a workshop and get such an interesting and meaningful result, Elena noted.

Anna Chigarina, executive director of the Uspekh Foundation and head of the "Recycling Workshop" project, congratulated the audience with this landmark achievement and expressed her gratitude to the project’s partners on behalf of the Foundation:
I would want to see the Recycling Workshop in Tomsk become a point of attraction for its younger residents. I am confident that this is just a small step in the beginning of a long journey where we will be able to jointly set up a system of waste collection, recycling and reuse that is sustainable and capable of producing excellent results in the near future.

Earlier,  the recycling workshop gave a series of educational master classes on recycling plastics. The purpose of these practice-centered classes was to foster the nurturing of an environment-conscious culture in the members of the younger generation. More than a hundred school students took part in the workshops over a period of three days.

The Recycling Workshop is a comprehensive environmental project aimed at developing a framework for separate collection and recycling of plastic waste, as well as at helping build a lasting attitude towards recycled plastic as an important resource for manufacturing new products. It is comprised of several lines of activity including establishing recycling workshops in the regions where SIBUR operates, holding environmental contests and other events with a view to developing an eco-culture. The very first recycling workshop was opened in December 2020 in Tobolsk followed by the second one in Dzerzhinsk in April 2021. In 2021, similar workshops opened in Nizhnevartovsk and Tomsk. The workshops offer comprehensive master classes on recycling used polymers into new useful products

To join the project’s environmental community, visit us on  VKontakte and Instagram.

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