Brickbusters continue to work on milk carton recycling
The St. Peter’s School Brickbuster robotics team visited Perkins Engineering in Sussex Jan. 25, during a teacher in-service day when they had off of school.
The team went to Perkins Engineering to learn what kind of materials and cost would be involved if they went ahead with constructing their milk carton crushing prototype. The students learned how to make an isometric drawing, explored drawing with labels, bill of materials and patent planning.
Their invention is designed to be a kid friendly, safety-first machine that will crush milk cartons to save space in a school environment with ease of removal for custodial staff. Their idea came from the challenge given to them from the FIRST Lego League Trash Trek theme.
The Trash Trek challenge was broad and assigned to all teams around the world this past fall.
“The team has been working hard to make a difference in the area of carton recycling since East Troy has become a milk carton town,” teacher Jenni Lehman said. “The team began recycling at their school early in the fall, earning them a Seedling School Award from the Department of Natural Resources.”
The Carton Council has been following the team’s progress and helped the team secure a grant for five large milk carton recycling container bins to aid with the process of collecting cartons in large group settings such as school cafeterias.
The team has offered them to the Eats Troy and Lake Geneva middle schools.
“The team would like to push the idea just a bit farther and make their invention a reality to help larger schools who may have several thousand students on campus,” Lehman said. “Milk carton recycling could become a major hurdle if space is a factor. Milk cartons break down in landfills after five years but the concern is the plastic polyethylene coating that could be left for years to come in the landfill.”
The team has researched compactors and recycling for the past five months.
Lehman said the Brickbusters began the process by analyzing how many milk cartons their own small school threw away last year. The school of more than 100 students threw away over 11,900 milk cartons in one school year.
“The team knew that they needed to make a change quickly and aware that there may be other schools not recycling milk cartons,” Lehman said. “The compactor would hopefully encourage schools to recycle efficiently and make a difference in recycling paper to help save trees.”
The Brickbusters will share their project over the radio on Feb. 21 during an interview with 96.1 The Lake. The team also hopes to inspire other students in the listening area to form a team and join in the STEM fun.
They are also looking forward to competing with their robot, having fun with teambuilding and share their project with others at the State tournament on Feb. 21 at Madison College, Lehman said.
The Brickbusters are mentored by Mike D’Amico-of Rockwell Automation and Liam Coen, of GE, both parents of students at St. Peter’s and parishioners at St. Peter’s. Team members are: Aidan Coen, Brietta Coen, Mac Dudkiwecz, Kyle Lehman, Christina Nolting, Annie Cate Schmidt, Lucy Schrieber and Mary Schrieber.
