Something out of nothing

Visitors at Saturday's Recycling Fair

Residents explored both their desire to preserve the environment and a touch of creative flair on Saturday September 27 at the Stad Popiler car park in Victoria for the annual recycling fair.

Sponsored jointly by the Seychelles Marketing Board (SMB) and the Solid Waste and Cleaning Agency (SWAC), the fair saw a number of participants who took common items normally discarded as trash and transformed them into valuable products or trinkets.

Les Masterson, owner of Thoughts, a stained glass company that primarily produces church windows, claimed the R2,500 prize for best entry.  Mr Masterson created an array of glass products, from drinking glasses to ornamental beads, all from melted down glass from different parts of expired Perrier bottles.

Mr Masterson said that his entry came as a result from a phone call about six months ago, when he was asked if he might be able to use a shipment of 150 boxes of Perrier water bottles.

The water had expired before the importer could sell it, and since customs would not let it through, the shipment was just sitting at the port, he said.

He agreed to take them, thinking that 150 boxes of Perrier bottles would not amount to much, but Mr Masterson said when he arrived at the port, the 150 boxes actually filled up an entire container – 35,000 bottles worth.

“It took us about a week, with ten guys, just sitting at the port and emptying bottles into the sea,” Mr Masterson said.

Mr Masterson said he planned on using the glass from the bottles mainly to produce decorative glasses, made from the original Perrier bottle turned upside down, as an item to sell to tourists.

“The water expired and somebody lost a lot of money, but luckily they didn’t throw it away and gave it to me,” he said.

Mangala Raja, winner of the R1,500 second prize, produced an assortment of creations from the tin foil lids from powdered milk cans, from embossed and coloured artistic leaf designs to more practical items like filter drains for kitchen sinks.

All of her items were fairly simple to make using only a pair of scissors and a common marker, said Ms Raja, who also won first prize in last year’s recycling fair.

Ms Raja, a teacher at Belonie Secondary, said that she was also using the tin leaves as a teaching aid for her students to identify different plant species.

Although she said last year’s recycling fair appeared to have more entries, Ms Raja thought that the quality of items produced for Saturday’s fair had improved from the previous edition.

Awards for best effort and most creativity were also given to the fair’s participants.

The results from a radio quiz as part of this year’s Clean Up the World Campaign were also announced during the fair’s proceedings.  A vacuum cleaner, donated by Ramu Pillay of Sales Point, was given to runner-up Anse Royale Secondary, and La Misere Primary won the radio quiz competition to claim a stereo.

Speaking at the outset of the fair, Mary Stravens, the managing director for SWAC, said that the fair was proof that recycling was not only beneficial for the environment, but it could also be a source of profit.

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