3R (Recycle, Reduce, Reuse).

A mega project blog by Group 4-Batch 149,Amal Academy.

As we are working on the re-usage of plastic bottles instead of burning them. We were able to gather the necessary resources to construct the trashcan out of it. In the first week, we collected bottles from our neighbours, relatives and our homes. We presented our idea to them too, and they seem impressed with what we are planning to do.There were four main resources which were the Plastic Bottles, Strings, Wood and Nails.

The design of the trashcan was made to be simple as we did not want the audience to worry about the complexity of the design.In the second week, after the collection of the bottles and other material our circle members started making it. The frame of the trashcan was made up of the piece of wood and to give the necessary hold, the support was given by placing the plastic bottles between them. The plastic bottles were attached through a string to the frame of the trashcan.Thus far, we have managed to meet all those deadlines that we had set for the first three weeks.

Challenges-

Due to online fellowship, our groupmates were unable to co-operate at a maximum level and four members had to collect and construct on their own which had a great impact on our construction method. We had to collect bottles from our neighbors, from shopping marts, from restaurants etc. Even we went to solid waste management companies in our localities to collect bottles. Anyhow, this process was not altogether that difficult and we were able to collect bottles in sufficient quantity. We also got to witness how much plastic bottles were collected by solid waste management agencies that were ultimately going to be dumped on landfills. This gave us a stark reminder of how carelessly we use plastic bottles.However, we came to conclusion that steel was an expensive alternative which might render our project not a cost-effective solution. Therefore, we utilized left over woods which we were able to acquire from our home, from nearby construction sites (most of them were a waste scrap material and leftovers) as well as buying from wood stores in small quantities.
The third part involved construction. As I mentioned earlier, we planned to totally rely on plastic bottles to assemble the trash can but later, turned towards making a composite trash can using wood and plastic bottles. We watched several tutorials on the You Tube and were able to successfully assemble four trash cans which we are going to place on the public places such as schools, parks, sidewalks etc. in the coming week.

Outcome and People we were able to impact:

The responses we have received were encouraging. People appreciated us and also willing to do it by themselves. We learnt teamwork, solving conflict, built a huge network, created awareness and made the people interested to make something new and unique from the plastic bottles.

This creative idea being inexpensive & home-based, left an impressive impact on people. There are so many people which we plan to target in our campaign, and we have only achieved the target of eighty percent of them yet.

If we change our approach in the future or not, and the work that is still left?

We will be using this same approach in the future as it has attracted great impressions from everywhere. However, the medium of our message will change as we are going to use the power of social media as well.

We are going to make few more bins from the resources that are left with us, doing more live sessions on Facebook page to engage the audience and then we will place the bins on the public places such as schools, parks, sidewalks etc. in the coming week.

How will this project continue in the future?

We will use social media and more creative ways of creating awareness among more people. For this purpose, we will be posting various ways of using the Plastic Bottles in making homemade products to enhance the creativity of the audience and to approach the eco-friendly way through our Facebook page. We thought about this project from the beginning to be sustainable and feasible to implement because we are very passionate to make the world a better place for the present and future generations to come.