Recycling that’s changing lives: How Take 3 students take action

Written by Allie Shaw

Take 3’s education program has inspired highschool students to lead their own project against plastic waste, demonstrating how inspired, plastic-free thinking can motivate people to take action.

After attending Take 3’s Project Loggerhead Turtle Workshop earlier this year, Year 9 Wingham Highschool student, Amber Loretan decided to join the fight against plastic. Amber and her friends, Lea Urquhart and Miranda Frendin, began collecting plastic lids destined for landfill and set about rerouting them to Envision Hands Australia: a community-based organisation which would then upcycle this plastic waste into prosthetic limbs for kids.  

“Seeing all these videos about animals and the ocean being so polluted has challenged some of us kids to bring our use of plastic down. If we don’t act now, scientists say in the next 12 years there will be no turning back,” said Miranda.

“It’s been eye opening to see how disgusting we humans are with plastic,” says Amber.

Take 3’s education program aims to ignite plastic-free leadership within students around Australia. The program’s approach is to provide students with a compelling reason to act, before encouraging the development of original ideas to solve the plastic pollution in their local community. Students are led to develop solutions that will:

• Implement source reduction initiatives to prevent litter in their school and community
• Reduce waste sent to landfill from their school through a tailored and specific action plan
• Track and share their impact to educate and inspire the broader community

“These outcomes of the Take 3 Education Programs are the most inspiring and uplifting of stories. Students have taken our simple message and made it their own, deciding to use their Student Action Plan as a means to help the community,” said Amanda Marechal, Take 3 Co-Founder and Head of Education, “The innovation and generosity of these students brought a tear to my eye as they were so determined to give back to the community.”

Envision Hands is a community-based, not-for-profit organisation focused on collecting plastic recyclable waste destined for landfill and turning it into filament for 3D printers, to then make prosthetic hands for kids.

“At the moment we are on a mission. Our mission is to create 100 bespoke aids out of bottle caps with 3D printers, which we will then donate to a child in need,” says Envision Hands.

While Take 3’s message is simple, the outcomes and benefits of this message are often profound.