Active Hope as an Antidote: A Year of Building LoopLAB

The week that I’m writing this reflection, it’s the same week that fire season in BC has blown up across the province, and the PNW, and depending on how wide you look - the northern hemisphere. There is a foreboding sense of doom - and a flail I feel in my future planning when I think about what it means, and all that is being lost as part of climate change. How much more there is to come. I get existential real quick.

That doom is part of the reason I am doing Delve. Pathfinding, scanning, shifting into ways of being what the world needs next (and now). 

LoopLAB started as a pitch in a grant proposal I wrote back in 2024 - I sought funding to pull a mobile recycling studio together, and with the gracious support of the BC Plastic Action Fund, was able to make it a reality.

My own experience collecting and shredding plastic, then transforming it into new things, had redefined how I looked at waste - it shifted the types of conversations I had with my neighbors, friends, and community about climate action, agency, and possibility. I was keen to bring that mindset shift, and micro-recycling as alchemy, to students. I had been delighted by the excitement and interest that so many around me shared about the micro-recycling work I was doing and conveying that into an experience that could be shared with classrooms and community is what I set my sights on. 

I live in Williams Lake, BC, a rural city of about 13,000 people, a hub in a region of much smaller communities. The vision was to create a workspace inside a mobile studio - such that we could breakdown and transform plastic in places across the region. Park in place A for a few weeks, move to place B - the flexibility allowing for a business model that could listen and respond to demand, interest, and available funding. With a trailer-based set-up, we could offer school programming, or on-site recycling, or a pop-up activity at events, and continue to come up with ideas and applications as we build up experiences and gain feedback. 

Over the past year I’ve done the work to deliver on the vision of putting a mobile recycling studio together. It’s called LoopLAB - it’s a long, white cargo trailer with workbenches, shelving, shredders, injection machines, and many crates of colorful plastic to sort, shred, and create with. I’ve built partnerships and developed a program framework. I’ve been into classrooms and piloted the programming a few different ways. Several irons are in the fire now - trying to make most use of this unique asset, putting it to best work for inspiring, educating, and recycling. 

A three session Community Problem Solving + Design series where Delve partnered with the Wells and Area Community Association, to bring a three session series to the Wildways High School students. 

A Plastic Fantastic program design that Delve developed in partnership with the Northern BC Makers Collective, the University of Northern BC, and the Climate Education in Teacher Education project that saw us deliver two days of micro-recycling to grades 3 and 4 in an elementary school, and 9 through 12 in a high school. 

A half day session targetted to teachers during a School District 27 Professional Development day - I shared about waste and recycling in the region, climate action, and the opportunities that micro-recycling offers. Teachers walked with me through the process using the original equipment I used including a pizza oven, a shop press, and an aluminum compression mold. 

I’ve pulled case studies for each of these projects, here - as a way of sharing what I’ve learned and showing you, dear reader, what the experience of micro-recycling is like. 

The main push at present is to secure sponsorship or a contract to deliver 15-20 sessions in fall 2026, and early 2027. I have a weekly routine of reaching out to contacts, those warm and cold, to share what I’m doing and pitch what storytelling opportunities their sponsorship would offer them. Let me list a few of those here, in the hopes that you can help share the good word out within your circles of influence:

• Eyes light up - it’s hands-on, sustainability and science learning

• Reportable, unique metrics for corporate ESG reporting

• It reaches beyond classrooms into the communities that surround participating students and schools. 

• It’s a visually compelling story to share - photos of plastic waste moving through the process, in the hands of students. 

I could write and write about the ways that LoopLAB is a unique and aligned sponsorship choice. And I will - if you have a recommendation on a contact or organization I should connect with, please share. I like to dig in and see what the most compelling components are for each prospective sponsor and pitch them. 

In a time when the world is on fire, I try to remind myself that hope as a beacon remains an important mission. We need to know that there are ways to engage differently, to build a world that better cares for all.. LoopLAB is a way of engaging in that mission. Active hope as an antidote to being consumed by climate fear.