Embedded Files
One way to minimise food waste is to make your own pickled vegetables from food that might otherwise go to waste.
Quick Kitchen scrap pickles recipe from the SBS website
Bon Appétit Quick, Crunchy Pickles with Your Vegetable Scraps Video
Material Technologies - Plastic
Nurdle in the rough jewellery makes use of discarded plastic found in the ocean or washed up on the beach to make jewellery.
Agriculture and Food Technologies
Recycled Mats made from recycled materials by aboriginal artists featuring cultural stories. This product meets two cross curriculum priorities.
Material Technologies - Textiles
In a world where we are increasingly concerned about sustainability and reducing plastic waste a good sustainable materials technology project could focus on creating zero waste inspired items such as shopping and or produce bags from recycled materials like the ones in the video below or from new materials like those found in a tutorial on the Wellness Mamma website. There are lots of private citizens who are all doing their bit to live a Zero waste lifestyle. Read more here.....
The Boomerang Bag movement has already inspired schools to get involved. Boomerang Bags are handmade often from recycled fabric and placed outside shops for people to borrow and then return. They encourage the use of recyclable alternatives and lessen the use of single-use plastic bags. There are lots of great resources like these on their site
Beeswax food packets and wraps are another idea that students can design and produce in different shapes and sizes and for different purposes such as reducing plastic wrap and bags in lunchboxes. There are several methods with which they can be made from using an iron and baking paper to the microwave or the oven. Here is one easy example.
There are also a host of home made fabric projects including unpaper towel, dish scrubbing pads and DIY make-up remover squares like these from The life song mama blog: Steps Toward Sustainability: Reusable Cotton Pads {Tutorial}
These DIY crocheted reusable (makeup remover) cotton pads can be made from a free pattern on this website.
One way to stop the wastage of disposable wooden chopsticks is to bring your own. This is a very real waste issue in Japan. Perhaps your students could make a chopstick case or chopstick carrier which rolls up and fits easily into a bag. It could also be made from fabric scraps or recycled clothing to make it sustainable. This is an easy Chopstick Carrier Tutorial. Perhaps they could take it one step further and make their own chopsticks or wooden resuable cutlery?
Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia & Sustainability
Kintsugi
Many of us will not have gold dust available at school although this may make for an interesting discussion or research topic. A lesson in repair and reuse can be found in the japanese practice of Kintsugi where a knowledge of materials assists in transforming broken items into [beautiful usable new objects]. "Kintsugi is the traditional Japanese craft of repairing broken ceramics with “urushi” glue and gold or silver dust. It expresses the Japanese principle of “mottainai”, a concept for the regret experienced from waste. It’s significant for being a rare traditional form of “transformative” repair, or repair that intentionally changes the appearance of an object." Source: Kintsugi and the art of ceramic maintenance
Boro (and visible mending)
"Luxury is a system of life established upon waste." Source Kiriko Website accessed 10/10/2018"Boro (Japanese: ぼろ) are a class of Japanese textiles that have been mended or patched together. The term is derived from Japanese boroboro, meaning something tattered or repaired. During the Edo period fabrics made from silk and cotton were reserved for only a select portion of the upper class[es]. Boro thus came to predominately signify clothing worn by the peasant farming classes, who mended their garments with spare fabric scrapes out of economic necessity. When a kimono or sleeping futon cover started to run thin in a certain area, the family’s women patched it with a small piece of scrap fabric using sashiko embroidery.
In many cases, the usage of such a boro garment would be handed down over generations, eventually resembling a patchwork after decades of mending.
Boro also exemplifies the Japanese Aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi, in that the fabric reflects the beauty of natural wear and use." Source: Wikipedia accessed 10/10/2018
In Western culture the idea of boro can be seen in the visible mending trend, where damaged garments of all textile types are repaired in an obvious or colourful way, often using embroidery techniques such as japanese sahiko stitching.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse