STEAMLabs: fashion against plastic
- Borough: Hackney
- Organisation: STEAMLabs
- Topics: environment, children and young people
Who we are
STEAMLabs Hackney are a Community Interest Company (CIC) that delivers exciting, creative, and high-quality STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths) workshops and events in Hackney and surrounding areas.
Our mission is to help children and their communities have fun with science. We’re incredibly passionate about cross-curricular learning and champion this across our programmes. In doing so we hope to encourage children to develop a strong understanding of how different subjects intertwine and give them an understanding of their world outside of the classroom.
Learning about single-use plastic
For this project, primary school children from Hackney investigated how plastic can be bad for our environment and how material scientists are coming up with alternatives to plastic. With leather made from grapes, bags made from milk proteins and many other ways to replace plastic, children learned that there is no longer any excuse for single-use plastic items.
Armed with this knowledge and passionate about protecting their local rivers and parks from rubbish, the children used the high-profile world of fashion to send a message about plastic.
Our younger generation are angry that single-use plastic is still being produced and used by people in their community. They are upset when they see rubbish in their waterways:
Children designed environmental placards and created fashion from plastic found in the home.
I can’t see the water, I want to know what animals are in there but it’s covered with plastic bottles and crisp packets.
The changes we would like to see
Children are eager to creatively communicate their feelings about protecting their environment. We would like to see children’s education in environmental issues increased in engaging, creative ways that are relevant to and led by children. We would like children’s viewpoints to be taken into consideration and for them to be involved in large numbers with local and global environment issues, working alongside young, relevant, inspiring scientists.
We would like every child’s passion and imagination harnessed so they can be part of the solution to our global pollution problems. We want creative solutions within our area so that everyone can get on board with policies to protect our environment.
Find out more
Get in touch
If you have any questions you can get in touch with STEAMLabs at [email protected]
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