Neston High School Maker Space
By Pat Link, Head of Design and Technology, Neston High School
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Our extraordinary journey in making an impact on the Environment started back in 2017 at Neston High School.
When studying at Edge Hill University in 2012, I had an assignment on sustainability, and I wanted to ensure that the project would be something I could use in the future. My inspiration came from my loved bright orange fleece jacket which I had owned since 1993. It had been made from recycled plastic bottles.
I went on to find research by Dave Hakkens in 2012. He is a Dutch industrial designer who started Precious Plastic a movement which promotes machines and organisations who take part in plastic recycling. I used this for my university assignment to start building a school project around plastic recycling. Precious Plastic launched its first idea for accessible plastic recycling in 2013. It used panini makers, scissors, and grease- proof paper to make coasters.
A few years later I joined Neston High School in 2017. This was the start of our adventure; it took a little while to win over the students and staff and convince them that we needed to change.
"meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
This is a quote that resonates with me from What is Environmental Sustainability? Goals with Examples by Nicholas Patterson.
We started fundraising to improve our recycling capacity by adding in-house build machines using the Precious Plastic blueprints and adapting them to make them safe to use in school.
The first machine to upgrade was our plastic shredder.
We started with a small compact hand-driven shredder I bought with some fundraising. We also managed to fundraise for a high torque motor with a gearbox to drive the shredder at 70rpm. We made even more upgrades to this machine once we had the local council's health and safety approval that the device was safe to operate in school.
Our Makerspace team meets officially once a week after school. The club is open to any student who wants to make things, learn new skills, and get help with problem-solving.
Introducing Precious Plastic recycling helped us build our machines alongside the students. This was so valuable, giving them the opportunity to use the machines but also learn how to build them.
We have been awarded the STEM silver Club award for the work we are doing on plastic recycling and STEAM education.
To develop our plastic recycling project, we wanted to make an injection moulder, but buying an off-the-shelf version was not going to be the answer, the cost would have wiped out our department budget. We built a machine for just over £500. We then sold the products we made, which enabled us to reinvest the money to buy more moulds and increase our production.
In 2021 we started looking into entering competitions and started planning to build our sheet press to make plastic sheets for design and make projects. We want to be able have a fully sustainable way of making new products from recycled plastic.
Our engineering students enjoy making parts for our school-made machines using our lathes and welding equipment.
In 2021 we launched our community open evening and invited people to see first-hand what we are doing in school.
In 2022 our students won the All About STEM Best of the Best award. Students make a video show casing our Makerspace Plastic recycling project and submitted this long with a poster showing the whole process form cleaning and sorting, shredding and injection moulding. If students attend Makerspace on Thursdays they receive training to use the machines.
We have been active on social media sharing our journey and sharing our journey even when things have not gone our way. This has helped us raise our profile within the local community and the wider plastic recycling community. The local community has been able to collect raw materials for us and we have been able to support other schools who have started their own makerspaces.
We have been involved in maker events, showcasing our project. These have included:
Liverpool Makefest; together with Plastic Tastic
Africa OYE Liverpool
SAving Ron's Place
Various Primary STEM days
We will be helping to host Wirral MakeFest in June of 2023; if you are interested in showcasing or just coming along, please get in touch!
email us
The hard work we have put in as a team, and the buzz about the project in school and the local community encouraged us to submit an application for the environmental category of the Educate Awards (North West). We were delighted to be recognised as the overall winner in this category at a prestigious event in Liverpool Cathedral in November.
Winning the award has spurred us on to dream bigger and better for 2023.
It is now second nature for all 1700 students at Neston to save their bottle tops and collect them for our project.
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