Helping kids learn — with waste
household packaging that is usually thrown away, providing 20 751 children with educational toys.
Using cereal boxes, polystyrene vegetable trays, plastic drink and milk bottle lids, yoghurt containers and plastic bottles, Singakwenza hopes to change the gloomy scenario of many day care centres like Nsimba’s, by teaching communities to recycle waste packaging in a different way. The aim is not to rely on donations for learning apparatus and resources but to use a DIY approach to adequately prepare and stimulate the minds of children in their preschool years.
With a pair of scissors, a marking pen and ordinary rubbish, the Waste2Toys workshops train teachers on a “whole range of educational toys that teach the same concepts as purchased toys, but for zero cost”. Bread bags are transformed into skipping ropes, margarine containers become cars, polystyrene trays become puzzles, yoghurt containers become shape sorters and cereal boxes become dice. Cutting shapes into a shoebox lid can teach children how to learn different shapes, by pushing cardboard pieces through into the box.
The simple exercise of poking holes through a polystyrene vegetable container with used matchsticks enables muscles to develop in the tiny hands of a nine-to-15-month-old child. This exercise incidentally forces the child to hold the thin matchstick in the exact manner one would correctly hold a pencil. The simple tool enables a strengthening of the hand to swiftly advance from a palm grip to a five-finger grip, until the child is able to master a pencil grip. Hall says “if children don’t learn that at the time when they are at the most receptive to learn”, they are at risk of getting into grade one being unable to hold a pencil, and consequently unable to do the writing that teachers demand from them.
Occupational therapist Magdel Houson says: “The occupation of children is working through play. Their work is to play.”
“If you donate toys and then they break, then who replaces them? The reality is that if you have children playing with toys, they do break.” By using waste in an imaginative and educational manner, a lack of the resources need not stand in the way of good early educational learning.
Smart packaging design
Packaging which becomes waste needs to be designed in a way that promotes its use beyond just housing its original contents and attracting consumers. According to Green Choices, a UK-based lifestyle advocacy group, a third of all domestic waste packaging is food packaging, which is difficult to recycle as packaging is driven by the desire to promote the brand and make money, not to meet real human needs or promote recycling.
Hall says Singakwenza frequently used baby formula and coffee tins to make shape sorters and posting activities, but the metal used tended to be too thin and rusted too quickly to be safe for children to use. Cereal boxes are also an integral part of the activities within the classroom; however, most boxes now have printed text inside, and painting over the text, defeats the point of minimal use of resources.
In an effort to promote good environmental practices through packaging, Packaging SA released its 2015 revised document on ways to produce sustainable and safe package material across the board. The findings and recommendations urge all industry players to consider what can be done with packaging after it has completed its initial function, and how it can be re-used.
The research found that minimising food residue in used packages is imperative to reduce unnecessary waste and contamination, making it easier for recyclers to repurpose. By avoiding sharp corners within the design, product residue is less lightly to collect within the container. Packaging designers were also urged to investigate the use of non-stick additives within the pack and product to reduce contents clinging to the container and to ease emptying.
Using removable labels is also an opportunity to maximise the value of the material being recycled. A label or sleeve that avoids colour contamination may also add a decorative element to the container.
Innovative ideas on how packaging can become recyclable for day care centres are beginning to emerge; perhaps, in the future, packaging companies will move towards creating more sustainable, user-friendly designs.