Recycling Bottle Caps – Mosaic Swallows – Our Video Story
In summer 2016, we announced our intention to commence collecting bottle caps on our social networking sites. After watching a video on the damage that plastic can do to nature, we felt the need to take action in contributing towards a safer, healthier environment for all creatures. These innocent birds ate the plastic pieces that they had seen thrown around, fooled into thinking that this was nourishing food. Unfortunately, these birds died leaving a multitude of coloured plastics undigested in their systems. https://youtu.be/dAL9Xvrg3hI
The over use of plastics by man is unnecessary and damaging to other creatures which has a knock on effect on bio-diversity. We felt the need to communicate the positive, artistic effects that plastic can have and we decided we would communicate that to our school community and to other schools through our social networking sites.
As our collection of bottle tops grew, we brainstormed ideas for our ‘reducing and reusing plastic’ project. We decided we would like to show the beauty of the bird through reusing plastic rather than littering plastic. We noted how swallows come and go from our school yard from year to year. The swallow is a symbol of love for friends and family. The bird also resembles loyalty by returning to the same place from year to year. Swallows depict new beginnings. The past experiences of the fire in our school in September 2015 are left behind. We embark upon new beginnings as we open our newly refurbished school on Easter Sunday 2017.
We cut out swallows onto corrugated board made from recycled plastic. We stuck on the collected bottle caps with strong glue onto the board, smoothing the bottle cap edges with sand paper to ensure grip and reinforcement.
The message we convey is that birds are wonderful and interesting creatures that have an equal right to life on earth. As humans we need to be mindful of the right to life of all creatures. We are placing a ‘Bottle Cap Bank’ in our school car park to encourage wider recycling of bottle caps and to help further develop our creative use of bottle caps.
We aspire to significantly minimising waste at our school. We want to improve our habits around waste and recycling. Please join us in working together towards reducing and re-using as much waste as we can. Our efforts will contribute to making this world a better place for all creatures and mankind
Students & Múinteoir Síle
April 2017
We made an appeal on the local roadio for bottle caps and to talk about our school story. Click here to listen