Over the Autumn months, an exciting waste and recycling campaign ‘The Recycling Showdown’ involved artist Jason Hicks, along with CCBC’s Recycling Advisors, delivering educational workshops at five schools across the borough, educating Year 5 and 6 pupils the importance of recycling correctly.
During the workshop, pupils had the opportunity to design recycling themed hero and villain characters. The top hero voted by residents was announced as Recycle Flower, designed by pupils at Park Primary School, and the top voted villain was Colin the Corn, designed by pupils at Crumlin High Level Primary School.
Following the announcement, Jason began to bring the winning character designs to life by casting them on to two 4ft sculptures.
Parts of the sculptures were constructed from recycled materials including EKOply and crushed aluminium cans. The hero sculpture displays used, clean drink cans in the bottom gabion highlighting an example of what can be put into the household recycling bin whilst the villain sculpture displays soft plastics highlighting an example of what cannot be put into the household recycling bin.
The winning class from Park Primary School visited Bargoed Library to see the impressive sculptures for the first time with their winning design displayed on top. The pupils explained what they learnt during the recycling workshops to the Mayor of Caerphilly, Cabinet Members, and Local Members that attended.
All pupils that participated have also received top trumps style playing cards that includes every design from the project.
The sculptures will be displayed in Bargoed Library for visitors to see until September where they will then be taken to Newbridge Library, the local library of the second winning school. From there, the tour continues across the borough, stopping at Blackwood, Ystrad Mynach, and Caerphilly libraries, giving residents across the community a chance to see the creative results of this educational campaign.
Cllr Chris Morgan, Cabinet Member for Waste, Leisure and Green Spaces, commented “It’s brilliant to see these pupils’ designs come to life. Through campaigns like The Recycling Showdown, we are able to educate our younger residents about recycling in a fun and engaging way as we strive to contribute to Welsh Governments goal of becoming a zero-waste nation by 2050. Residents should keep an eye out for these creative artworks when visiting their local libraries.”
Details of when you can visit the sculptures will be announced in September.
