Wellbeing 

Michele Hedley

HELPING OTHERS HAS A POSITIVE AFFECT ON OUR WELLBEING

At St Fidelis’ we are encouraging our students to get involved and contribute to caring for others and our environment. Here is an opportunity for everyone to be involved.

Envision Hands turns bottle caps into prosthetic limbs for kids in need

St Fidelis Social Justice Representatives are organising our school to be part of this amazing charity.  Envision Hands is a not-for-profit community initiative that uses 3D printing to turn plastic waste into mechanical hands and arms for kids, with the products being sent around the world. The recycled plastic bottle tops are turned into prosthetic hands using a 3D printing blueprint that's available online for anyone to use. The bottle caps are shredded and made into a filament. The Social Justice Representatives have put shoe boxes in each classroom to collect the bottle tops brought from home.

The charity only wants small plastic tops from milk bottles and soft drink and water bottles.

From the Website:

“We currently use all flat soft drink, water and milk bottle tops, including those from long life containers. The tops should be numbered either No 2 or No 4 in the recycle triangle but not all are marked. Ideally all bottle caps should be sorted into 2, 4 and unknown. We can use the unknown bottle caps for our R&D projects. We cannot process tops which have other plastic or metal attached – this includes water bottle tops which have pull up tops.  Any tops with other numbers like 5 or 7 are not required. We also ask that the caps are cleaned before they are donated and that no extra plastic, metal or other material is attached. Thank you so much for supporting Envision Hands.”

There are larger tops with No 2 or No 4 noted but we cannot process these at the moment as they are too large to shred with our machinery.

Thank you to the Social Justice Representatives and Leaders for assisting with our school’s involvement in this initiative.  Many children less fortunate than us will benefit from us taking time to provide this resource.  Our environment will also benefit from having less plastic waste.