On Service Day this year, the Fifth Form Recycling team completed two activities in Brighton and Hove designed to educate them about why it is important to recycle, and how different materials can be recycled.
Firstly, the team headed out into Stanmer Park to visit Earthship, an architectural project designed by Mike Reynolds, which explores how one might live sustainably and off the grid. Fully self-sufficient through solar power, rainwater, and home-grown food sources, the house is designed using different types of material which are usually difficult to recycle – such as car tyres – as well as using sustainably sourced products such as eco-cement. The students could see that successful recycling can often take creativity, and they spent the morning reconnecting to the natural world and developing a new respect for the landscape around them.
A beach clean was in store for the afternoon, to give back to the community and appreciate how important it is to recycle and look after public spaces. Despite the wet and windy weather, the team persevered and worked together to pick up as much litter as they could, even running a mini-competition to see who could find the strangest piece of rubbish!
Firm in their resolve to encourage others to reduce, reuse, recycle, and most importantly, rethink, the Fifth Formers returned to Hurst with new ideas about how they can promote some of the lessons they learned in their local community.