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A Garden of Plastic Project
 
Photo by Jan Stokes

A Garden of Plastic District Grant Project

Jan Stokes, Mossman Rotary —

The Rotary Club of Mossman District Grant, supporting areas of Youth and Environment.

The aim:

Educating and empowering children and our community about recycling

Reducing the plastic that goes into landfill and the ocean

Improving the health of the oceans and the Great Barrier Reef

The issues:

Only about 373,000 of approximately I billion plastic water bottles created in Australia each year are recycled, BUT all of those bottles have tops which cannot be recycled in the current system.

The District Grant enabled the Rotary Club of Mossman to implement a 3 stage plan:

Stage One

Members of Mossman Rotary contacted Mossman, Miallo, St. Augustine’s, Port Douglas Primary and High schools and delivered information sessions to the students, talking about the issues of plastic pollution, recycling and re-using plastics. We requested help from the students to collect bottle tops and asked the schools to become bottle top collection points.

Several local businesses including cafes and Containers for Change were asked to become involved as bottle top collection points. Containers for Change also volunteered to become a storage point.

Using an information stall at our local Show, Douglas Shire Council media releases, Social Media and local media outlets we encouraged the Douglas Shire community to collect bottle tops, recycle them at the collection points and to volunteer as washers and sorters.

High Falls Farm Restaurant assisted us to run working bees at the restaurant, where volunteers washed and sorted the bottle tops by colour and plastic type.

Stage Two

Mossman Rotary collaborated with “Call of the Running Tide” – an annual Environmental Sculpture and Multi Media Festival held in Port Douglas and supported by Douglas Shire Council. The festival features art works and sculptures created by local artists using plastics, ghost nets, ropes and other debris washed up on our beaches. The aim of the festival is to create awareness and educate the community about the issues of plastic and other pollution in our oceans and environment.

As part of the festival children aged 7-12 from our local schools and community attended workshops, both at school and during the school holidays, to learn about recycling and to create works of art using bottle tops. The sessions were supervised by local artists, who are passionate about recycling and preventing waste and pollution, and staffed by volunteers from Mosman Rotary and the Douglas community.

With the support of Markham Timbers and Mossman Hardware we purchased marine ply, marine paint and glue to create the bases for the art works. The Port Douglas Artists group gave up their time to cut the timber into 240 individual boards, which they then painted with marine paint, ready for the children’s workshops.

Stage 3 

The final stage of the program is to install the children’s art works as a permanent mural at the entrance of the new Paws and Claws Animal Shelter, currently under construction in Port Douglas.

Sam, the artist in charge of the installation, will be securing the thousands of tops to the boards using a bradder finishing tool, similar to a nail gun, to ensure that the tops stay in position. The marine ply and paint will also ensure the longevity of the mural, which will be a feature on the front of the Paws and Claws building.

The Rotary Club of Mossman is grateful for the District Grant and the support we received from our local businesses, Call of the Running Tide, Douglas Shire Council and the Douglas Shire community to ensure the success of this project. Our local children responded to this project with great passion and concern for the environment and we hope that the mural that was created by them will remain as a testament to their passion and a reminder to everyone about the effects plastic is having on our environment.

By Jan Stokes

Mossman Rotary