On Earth Day, students turned unwanted plastic into beautiful jewelry and trash cans

Every Bulgarian throws away instead of sending for recycling 113 plastic bottles per year, according to the reports of eco organizations.

Imagine that some of these bottles can come into use for you a second time and in an unconventional way. They can be made into jewelry, they can be made into thread and woven into shopping bags, hats and even fruit pans. How this is done was demonstrated by the young ecoactivists who are part of the clubs in the HALO Foundation campaigns.

Part of the courtyard of the Haskovo Language High School today became a plastic recycling workshop, and the initiative was dedicated to today’s April 22nd, when the world celebrates Earth Day.

Mentors in the workshop were Kristina Yordanova from “HALO” and Radostin Rusev from the “Volunteers for Plastic Recycling” organization.

Two pieces of wood, joined with dowels and attached to them a mock-up knife, become a self-made machine that cuts plastic bottles into uniform thin and long strips. From these strips, the connection between damaged plastic crates is woven and they become baskets that can be used for various activities, such as collecting leaves or larger garbage.

While some of the students learned these skills, another part learned to make ornaments from plastic caps. The colorful pieces melted with a heated iron became earrings and necklaces for the ladies.

Radostin Rusev, who is from Haskovo, but has been living in Sofia for years, is the typical example of a person who loves nature and does everything possible to keep it clean. His practice as a chakra practitioner meets him with many different people, whom he manages to convince while helping them with their ailments, that they should also think about protecting the environment. So Rosen has many followers in the eco initiatives he organizes. “I like!”. That’s how simple he explains what he did. The goal of the volunteers, which he has been leading for more than a year and watered, is to improve the urban environment in which they live. From 6 to 66 are the volunteers in the actions, says Rosen Rusen. Both the young and the old get involved in various actions and in cleaning up the garbage and in the work of recycling the old plastic waste and returning it to its functionality.

According to the eco volunteer, Bulgarians are gradually changing their way of thinking about environmental protection, but there is still a way to go.

As usual, Nikolay Ivanov and Alexandra Terzieva joined the foundation’s eco-incentives. The eleventh graders, who are graduates of the language high school in Haskovo, are part of the “Eco Champions” club. Just a week ago, under the name “Vodi”, the young people participated as a team and won first place among 200 contenders at the international science festival FISSION in the category “Experimental Ecology and Environmental Science”. Their recognition is for the development of a three-component filter of a new generation of non-synthetic material for water purification, which removes mechanical impurities and heavy metals and increases the concentration of useful minerals. Innovators are already thinking in the direction of patenting their discovery.

Krasimira Slavova