Less School Plastic in Landfills

My Students

Our kids want to change the world around them-so we build them a MakerSpace and Outdoor Learning Lab. This year, we focused on oceans-next year we want to focus on less school plastic in landfills, so we are building a plastic recycler to make our own 3D filament to and print self watering gardens.

Our school realizes that to keep Cape Cod great, we have to protect the land and water.

We have water run off problems polluting our ponds, plastics in our water ways, and too much plastic in our schools. Sure, we recycle but there is a lot of energy wasted in recycling too. In fact, just feeding people in our area causes a lot of energy waste. If we really care about the environment, we need to get local to solve real problems. We built an outdoor learning lab and greenhouse on campus from community support so that we understand how growing our own food can be better for the Air in lowering greenhouse gases from shipping trucks. We improved water quality by storing rain to water gardens rather than letting it run off into the ponds. For the land, we built vertical gardens that do not require nitrogen rich fertilizer that causes algal blooms in our water.

My Project

We are using our materials for a PBL unit on Keeping Cape Water CLEAN! Projects include: Using the 5 gallon buckets to build rain barrels to protect the pond on our campus from nitrogen runoff. Then, we plan to add the fish camera to a submersible ROV built by the robotics team-it will allow us to record the health of our pond. Then, we will use the 3D printer to build self watering planters that we can sell at Celebrate Our Waters Weekend. BUT, what is really awesome, is we will be making them from our own recycled plastic. We are using the blender to break down small plastic to recycle in our Filabot. With this Makerbot, we can print larger gardens and begin building automated gardens, too. Last, we are using the plastic sheets to cut stencils and paint warning signs near drainage grates on the dangers of run off to our ponds. If it is on the ground, it is in the water! We want to help educate locals on the small steps each person can take to improve our local area's ecosystem.

Each year, ponds close due to algal blooms-we have to fix this.

If ponds continue to close, and if our beaches and nature areas are over run by plastic, no one will visit here. Unfortunately, locals know this, but the tourists don't. By creating our Green Products, and building a public awareness campaign, we can keep Cape Cod GREEN for years to come both economically and environmentally.