Alessio Benussi, Nereo Cafolla and Laura Verdnik from TSŠ-SMSI Rovinj-Rovigno interviewed their school teacher, Ms Virna Dalino Polo, and learnt about her hobby: recycling things that we use every day to create useful objects.

Coffee machine: what a wonderful invention! You just put your coffee pod in and your day can start with a tasty, creamy cup of morning coffee.

But have you ever thought about what the real price of this common habit is? The use of the coffee pod, also known as "single-serve coffee capsules", is a method for coffee brewing that prepares coffee for a single portion.

Coffee pods are widely used all over the world in public places such as bars, shops, hotels, and train stations. Thus, making coffee is fast and easy: the pod is inserted into a coffee machine and the coffee its ready in a few seconds.

Unfortunately, there's a problem: coffee pods represent a danger for the enviroment because they are made of plastic, alluminium and also organic material, which is the coffee that remains inside the pods.

They are a mix of three very different materials and this characteristic makes them very difficult to recycle.

But do we really have to throw the coffee pods away if we use the coffee machine? What can we do with them instead?

Our teacher, Ms Virna Dalino Polo, has found a unique way to reuse this harmful waste. She heard about fashion jewellery made out of coke cans and other waste material. Once she even received such an item as a gift. So she got interested in producing pieces of fine art and in her opinion this is a wonderful way to recycle waste and preserve the environment.

She looked up for information and then started her artistic activity. She's been doing it for a year now and she's already made wonderful pieces of art.

But how does she make them? She says that only Nespresso pods can be used because they are entirely made of alluminium, so they are easily malleable and not prone to chemical trasformations. It is even not necessary to paint them because they are available in 20 different colours.

The first step is to take out the coffee waste (which can be used to fertilize your plants) from the pod. Then you wash the pod and press it using a simple kitchen tool, such as a meat mallet.

After it has been pressed, it can be shaped in many different ways to obtain the effect you want. You can use various molds to get different patterns, for example if you want to make a flower or a necklace. You can also use hot glue.

In the end, the fashion jewellery can be adorned with beads and other decorative objects. However, it is important to use anti allergic clips. Our teacher wears her own fashion jewellery and people get enthusiastic when they see it. 

We enjoyed interviewing our teacher and learning about her original ideas. We hope that her sustainable and innovative production of fashion jewellery will inspire other people to follow her example and thus contribute to save our planet.

Text: Laura Verdnik and Nereo Cafolla

 

                                                              OUR FUNDRAISING EVENT

 

           Then, on 5 March 2017 we organized a special event at school. See what happened...

 

Photos: Alessio Benussi