Australian high school students collected more than 2,000 plastic bottles to form a greenhouse, 11 years later, the structure supplies food for the school’s garden

A project that began as an ecological lesson has transformed the lives of students at an Australian high school. In the country’s capital of Canberra, students at the Richardson Primary School in south Canberra collected more than 2,000 plastic bottles and transformed them into the walls of a greenhouse that has been working efficiently for the past decade, as reported by ABC News. The project called Plastic Palace, was inaugurated on June 24, 2015, with a grant of AU$2,000 from the Teachers Mutual Bank Environment Fund. Eleven years later, the structure is still standing and provides food for the school’s garden.The idea originated in 2012 with Kate Davis, a sixth-grade teacher at the school, who proposed to her students that they transform everyday waste into an educational resource. The bottle collection lasted for a year and a half, with participation from students, teachers and families from across the school. “At first, we thought 2,000 bottles would be enough, but the original plan grew in scale,” explained Davis, who led the project from her classroom.In order to build the walls of the greenhouse, the bottles were cleaned and strung on columns attached to a wooden frame, mounted on the original earthen floor of the patio. Their translucent bodies allow light to pass through and protect the plants inside from the wind while the bottoms of the bottles are reused as pots for seedlings that are later transplanted to the garden. The construction combines hands-on learning with materials that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill.

The construction combines hands-on learning with materials that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill.

The grant given by the fund covered the cost of timber, tools and seeds and helped complete the construction. The greenhouse was officially opened on June 24, 2015, with the then Minister of Education for the Australian Capital Territory, Joy Burch, in attendance. “It’s a fantastic example of reduce, reuse, and recycle,” Burch said at the opening.The school’s headteacher, Jason Borton, recalled how the students worked with their teacher until the greenhouse dream became a reality. What began as a one-class project ended up involving the entire school, and today the Plastic Palace remains an integral part of science classes, the school garden, and the chickens. The seedlings that sprout among the bottles are eventually transplanted into the outdoor garden beds.“It has also helped them realise that something you use every day can be transformed into something else,” summarised Kate Davis, the teacher who spearheaded the project from the year it was first proposed.Moreover, when it comes to nurturing the greenhouse plants, the vegetable patch and tending to the school’s chooks, the students are in charge. “Really, they do everything in the garden. The classes come out to plant and they cultivate the food,” said Borton. “The greenhouse is the breeding ground for the seedlings, then the students transfer them to the garden so they can see how food gets to the table.”