The Columbus School |

Columbus School Plastic Planting

We are delighted to share a blog written by student Nicolas Yepes, from The Columbus School who is part of a team of students delivering a Global Goals project for the 2019-20 Global Goals Competition.

Their project is among over 957 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community. 

A great opportunity

Project Overview

Our Plastic Planting Project aims to create a better world with an ecological adept mindset. Plastic for the last 113 years has been a convenience but now we are faced with the consequences of that convenience. With plastic infesting the ocean and wiping species, there must be another way to use plastic so that it doesn’t lead to our inevitable demise. Recycling is all well and good, but what about communities that don’t have a solid waste system or local communities? With this intention in mind, we came up with the idea that plastic bottles could be used to plant trees or other types of greens. That way the plastic can spend a lot of time while biodegrading and serving as a plant pot. We are a group of students from The Columbus School, Colombia that want to improve our school, city and country for the better.

Our Journey

Ever since we embarked on this journey, we have learned a lot about ourselves as a group. We have learned what each of us is good at doing and needs help doing. Without a doubt the skill we most developed was teamwork. We know how to play out of each other’s strengths. Another skill that has come in handy is the ability to receive criticism. Receiving criticism can be tough, but along the path we have learned to extract the feedback and implement it. Everyone having specific roles, they know what they have to do and even some of us have decided what their strengths are and what they need help with. We think that our greatest challenge so far has been that we haven’t thought everything out. What tends to happen is that one of us has a half baked idea and we never go back to it to finish and develop it fully.

The Next Chapter

We have prepared a lot and investigated a lot about the issue, and after this our next step is to find the required materials and sources to start building what we need. This means looking somewhere and using our contacts to get a constant amount of water bottles to start working. With this in mind, we will be able to start making a change by building our first prototypes. We should also start by thinking about the types of plants that are going to be used for our project.

The 2019-20 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2020. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.