On March 6, 2025, The Hub hosted students Veera Saarenheimo, Heidi-Maria Muikku, Velma Pohjonen, and Oona Sillberg, with lecturer Marko Kallio from Aalto University in Finland for a Waste-to-Energy Technologies Workshop.
Skills & Soup’s primary- and high school students, along with our team, explored innovative solutions for waste management. We also learned about the dangers of air pollution from burning plastic waste and using paraffin heaters in closed spaces.
This student-led initiative, part of the Sustainable Global Technologies Studio course at Aalto University, is all about sharing knowledge and empowering communities with practical, eco-friendly solutions.
With the theme of renewable energy, Aalto University is collaborating with the National University of Lesotho as part of the Sustainable Global Technologies course. Last year, the group that carried out the same project visited The Hub during their course trip.
The workshop was divided into checkpoints:
- Measuring how a paraffin heater affects air quality in an enclosed space
- Measuring how burning plastic litter affects outdoor air quality
- Exploring the waste hierarchy – identifying activities in our daily lives on how to reduce, reuse, repair, recycle, recover or dispose of waste
- Exploring the future of waste and energy – identifying activities that we can do in the future to reduce, reuse, repair, recycle, recover or dispose of waste.
The results:
Reduce
Present:
- Use of reusable shopping bags and lunch boxes to avoid plastic waste.
- Bins for sorting different types of waste (paper, plastic).
- Carrying personal bags to avoid single-use plastic bags.
Future:
- Promote reusable shopping bags and prevent littering.
- Install recycling bins in all streets.
- Create educational programs or animations on reducing plastic.
- Build robots to clean water and plant trees to reduce climate change.
Reuse
Present:
- Reusing bottles, lunch boxes, plastic bags, glass, and clothes.
- Creative reuse like planting in bottles, making decorations, and using reusable sanitary towels.
- Reuse of materials like boxes and backpacks.
Future:
- Use plastic in making useful items (e.g., car seats, lunch boxes, rings).
- Reuse natural materials (cow skin, goat wool) for clothing.
- Educate others about the benefits of reuse.
Repair
Present:
- Fixing clothes, bags, shoes, furniture, and phones.
- Schools repairing broken desks and chairs.
Future:
- Repair household items, electronics, and even turbines.
- Repurpose broken items creatively (e.g., jelly glass for storage).
- Fix clothing into new fashion items like crop tops.
Recycle
Present:
- Recycling plastic bottles into items like chairs, hats, rulers, toys, and decorations.
- Reuse of paper into lunch boxes and papier-mâché items.
- Bottle caps recycled into school supplies.
Future:
- Make bricks, toy cars, jewellery, sunhats, puppets, and furniture from recycled plastic.
- Promote recycling awareness.
- Recycle organic materials (e.g., sheep wool, wood) into clothes and book pages.
Recover
Present:
- Using water to generate electricity (hydropower).
Future:
- Recovering wool and maize stalks to generate heat or make clothing.
- Promote recovery of useful materials when further recycling isn’t possible.
Dispose
Present & Future:
- Awareness of the environmental impacts of improper disposal (climate change, CO₂ effects).
- Properly disposing of unrecoverable waste.
- Promoting clean surroundings by using dustbins and discouraging burning.
We were happy that our Skills & Soup participants showed strong awareness of sustainable practices and actively engage in waste management through creative reuse, repairs, and recycling. There is a strong desire to educate others, innovate with waste materials, and build a cleaner, greener future.
The students from Aalto University will use the results of the workshop to produce learning materials for The Hub to use.
A big thank you to the incredible team from Aalto University!
Learn more about Aalto University:
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