DLSJ-LatestNews-Fabric Wallets for the Litterless campaign

De La Salle College Junior school are once again participating in the European Week for Waste Reduction campaign. The school has already been nominated for this award three times and won last year with the project titled Communities for Change.

This year we have become more aware of how many paper envelopes are used, and later thrown away, every time we collect money for donations, outing and such circumstances. The educators try their best to reuse such resources but most of the time this is not possible. As a school we are thus making an effort to reduce this paper waste.

As an initiative, the Ekoskola members, together with the educators and the SLT members discussed this issue and came up with the idea of transforming fabric materials into wallets for all Junior School students to use instead of paper envelopes. The fabric wallets have the benefit of being reused and washed numerous times, giving them a longer lifetime than that of a paper envelope.

We started off by sending an email to all parents/guardians to launch the project and we also asked for used clothes, extra fabric materials and thread which were intended to be thrown away.

The response from the students’ families and relatives was huge and we received bag loads of materials; enough to get the work started. The next step was to ask for helpers who would volunteer in sewing the wallets. Once again, a lot of parents, guardians, aunties and grandmothers showed interest in coming together to work on this project. We had two very important volunteers who managed the next steps of putting together the fabric wallets; two retired educators; Ms Rita Vella with the help of Ms Carmen Caruana who prepared a bag for each volunteer consisting of a pattern, a sample with instructions, velcro, fabric and thread.

Once the team of volunteers was put together, they had several meetings at school where they got to know each other, understood the process and the steps to make the wallet and clarified any difficulties along the way. In the end, Ms Rita and Ms Carmen ironed a name tag on each wallet so that students could label their personal wallet.

While this work was being done, the Ekoskola members prepared various clips which were uploaded online to explain this project to the Lasallian community and also to raise awareness on textiles and the benefits of fabric wallets.

At the beginning of the second term, the Ekoskola members went round all the classrooms in the Junior school to explain the idea behind the fabric wallets and distribute them to each Lasallian student.

A final email was sent to all those involved to thank them for their hard work and also to show appreciation for their contributions in this project.