My Personal Project - Mao Oishi

My name is Mao Oishi, and I am a Year 10 Somerset student currently undertaking the Personal Project as part of the Middle Years Programme. My aim of this project is to inspire and encourage people to recycle by contributing to recycling.

Achieving my aim of this Personal Project involves collecting plastic bottles and turning them into a watering bottle cap. My goal is to inspire and encourage people to recycle, by creating a game and book for children to learn from a young age, the benefits of plastic recycling. To do this, I intend to learn the method of recycling and utilising materials to create something productive.

Also, another aim of my Personal Project is to contribute to recycling by collecting plastic bottles and turning them into a watering bottle cap. To accomplish this, I intend to educate myself regarding recycling plastics. I will research and learn about plastic waste issues around the world. The products will be donated to the elderly in the Gold Coast Rose Society, where I regularly volunteer. This is because there are many hard chores in gardening that elderly people have difficulties with, such as carrying the heavy watering cans, replanting and pruning. This project will be challenging because I need to use my prior knowledge and gain additional skills on recycling during the holidays.

My Personal Project journey begun in January 2020, when I started to plan visiting the recycling factory to increase my knowledge. Initially, I contacted various recycling factories asking if they could assist through my project. Finally, I was able to find a small factory whcih offered to assist me.

The recycling factory (Fujita Gosei), told me that plastic bottle caps are needed to form my product. Therefore, since March 2020, I have been collecting plastic bottles, and after nine months, my collection has reached 677. However, as a result of COVID, it became clear that I cannot visit this recycling factory due to its overseas location. As a result, I had to modify my plan and decided to send the plastic bottle caps to the recycling factory in Japan. To send the package to the factory, I covered all the cost of the postage by exchanging 677 plastic bottles (without a bottle cap) for $67.70 at Gold Coast TOMRA Recyling centre.

Although my Personal Project journey is not yet completed, I have gained significant skills and knowledge regarding recycling. The project is enabling me to explore many different aspects of recycling and improve my knowledge of the topic. I am very determined to achieve my challenging goal by the end of my project.