Bishops Castle Schools Work

We have been working in partnership with the Councils Waste Education team to try and get schools in Shropshire area to recycle and compost more.  One of the activities recently organised included an eco-education day in Bishops Castle where school children got to learn all about sustainability issues for the day.

The Waste Education Officer offers a great practical session on paper making for schools which the kids really enjoyed.  By making their own sheet of paper from recycled paper, they learn just how much energy and water goes into the process and how much waste comes out as sludge at the end.  This in itself will hopefully make them take care to use less paper and to recycle or compost their paper.

The paper making process is relatively simple.  Firstly torn and shredded paper is soaked in warm water overnight to make a porridge like mixture.  The children then pass this mix through a fine seive.

This is then turned out onto a dry surface and tamped down with sponges to squeeze out and absorb as much moisture as possible.  Obviously in an industrial paper mill this process is done on a vast scale with rollers and machinery, but its basically quite similar.

After about 10 minutes of tamping down this leaves us with a nice but still quite damp sheet of paper.  So removing the frame and turning it out onto a drier surface like a fresh sheet of paper of a J cloth completes the process.

The end product has to be left to dry for 48 hours but once its ready it makes really beautiful paper.  Some of the children even thought to decorate them nicely so that they can be used for birthday and Christmas cards in the future.  Here is one of the best efforts from the day.

Well done to all the children in Bishops Castle and the waste education officer at the Council for a great day which hopefully in the long term will encourage more people to reduce, reuse and recycle.