Bottle for Botol

Boy this term has been busy and we're only a week and a half into it! There are lots of projects on the go but the one I want to talk about today is Bottle for Botol.

Last year I met Christine, young Australian of the year finalist for 2016.

'Christine Parfitt, 29 of Cottesloe has a passion for marine conservation and is undertaking a PhD in Environmental Education. She developed Bottle for Botol, partnering Australian and Indonesian students to reduce their consumption of single-use plastics. Her charity has worked with over 12,000 Australian students and 7,000 Indonesian students to raise awareness of the detrimental impacts of plastic on the marine environment. Since 2013, more than 100,000 plastic cups and bottles have been saved from release into the ocean, with numbers expected to be over one million this year.' (From Young Australian Awards website)

The Bottle for Botol programme sounded just right for our school, combining sustainability, Indonesian and Art. After meeting with Christine she was keen to have our school on board. Room 2 have been using this as a focus for their class work about Asia in geography. Christine came into the school and spoke to them and in art they are creating an animated film to introduce Pally to our Bali partner school.

All classes from year 4 upwards and some year 3s will participate in a competition to create a design one of which will go onto the stainless steel water bottles that will be sold later in the year in a fundraiser - more information about that closer to the time. 

 

To help us understand the need for the Bottle for Botol programme the children viewed a video about our water supplies and how we are able to drink clean safe water from the tap. We had discussions about why this might not be the case for all countries, Bali being one many of us are familiar with from our holidays. We dicussed ideas of sustainability and conservation as well as the differences between the flora and fauna of each landscape ( Perth and Bali) in order to develop the ideas for our designs.

 

The children will be writing explanations of why they chose the symbols and colours in creating their design in following lessons.

In order to select the most popular design to go onto the bottles there will be an online voting site where family and friends can support our school and our designs. I will post this information in the next week or so. 

If you are interested at having a closer look here is the link to the Bottle for Botol website. 

http://www.bottleforbotol.org/

 

Now I have the unenviable task of selecting the top few from each class so room 2 can help me come up with the top three designs for everyone to vote for online. ( I hate doing this bit because I know how much effort each child has put into their work and there are so many good ideas! )