Making bio plastic at Harland Works
People are very inventive in the things they get up to at Harland Works …. and it seems that this includes the visitors using our event space as much as our tenants. This Tuesday evening for example, bio plastic got made!
For the past few months our event space has been the Winter base for a local group of The Woodcraft Folk. Woodcraft Folk are a national charity which are “A movement for children and young people”. They are not actually anything to do with woods ;) - although there is a focus on outdoor activities and camping (when not at Harland Works). This week their activity involved a film and quiz on plastics - and then the chance to have a go at making a bio plastic themselves… how amazing is that?
Bio plastic is made from biodegradable materials and it was quite suprising that using just simple ingredients the children were able to make a cling film like plastic-looking material. The ingredients included agar agar, glycerine and water - all melted gently together and then poured out onto a baking tray. Different pouring and levelling skills, and different qualities of baking trays meant that some results were better than others - but lots of the children did manage to end up with a sheet of cling film like substance. If you’d like to have a go the recipe and instructions are here: https://materiom.org/recipe/41
The group were also introduced to an inspiring film about bio plastics featuring an engineer who had found a way to make bioplastic out of the waste from the fishing industry. Her plastic is now being used to create biodegradable fast food accessories - and it won her national recognition (and some prize money) when she was awarded the 2019 James Dyson Award for her invention which she called MarinaTex.
If you’d like to find out more about Woodcraft Folk see info and link below - there are long established groups in Sheffield always looking for new members. You can contact them via the national website or there’s a local facebook group too.
And if you’ve got a group that would like to use our events space for some fab activities, we’d love to hear from you - info on booking the event space is here.
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More about Woodcraft Folk: Every week thousands of volunteers and young people meet in school halls, community venues and a host of other places to learn about big ideas through fun activities like singing, camping, playing and debating. Our aim is to have great fun, but also to try to develop children’s self-confidence and build their awareness of society around them.
Through our activities, outings and camps we help our members to:
understand important issues like the environment, world debt and global conflict
develop activities focused on sustainable development
encourage children to think, hoping that they will help build a peaceful, fairer world.
Find out more about how Woodcraft Folk works here. To find out about becoming a member, see our Join Woodcraft Folk page. For more information on Woodcraft or if you would like to speak to someone at our head office, please email to info@woodcraft.org.uk