Delve x Wells WILDways School - Micro-Recycling Design Pilot

Wells, BC - funded through the Plastics Action Fund, delivered in partnership with the Wells and Area Community Association (WAACA)

Context

LoopLAB didn't arrive fully formed. It's been tested, piloted, and iterated on in classrooms - and this pilot series, delivered in Wells, BC, was the first iteration. 

The Wells and Area Community Association (WAACA) is the non-profit that channels that kind of organizing community-wide. Delve approached WAACA with a pitch: would Wells teachers and students be interested in being the first trial of the mobile recycling programming Delve was building? WAACA connected Delve with the WILDways teacher directly, and together they figured out what would actually work - the students, the school schedule, how to get into the classroom. The elementary school wasn't part of the original plan - when Delve returned in June 2026, near the end of the school year, the elementary teacher saw the opportunity and brought the younger kids in too. Behind the original pitch was a bigger question - could students engage with their own community's waste problems, propose real solutions, and then use micro-recycling to prototype them? Wells is remote enough that this kind of hands-on, maker-focused programming rarely reaches it. That's exactly why it was the right place to start. 

The Pilot

Session 1 - Introduction (virtual, May 2025): Delve joined the class over Zoom, walked through the equipment and the micro-recycling process, and opened up a conversation about recycling in Wells specifically - what the students already knew, what they wondered about. Students left with a worksheet built around connecting with their community and identifying what they'd like to improve - prompts asking what would make Wells a more beautiful place to live. The mission was to take those same questions home and ask them of neighbors and family, then bring back what they heard. 

Session 2 - Design (in-person, June 9, 2025): Delve visited Wells with playdough, measuring tools, and a set of questions about what the students had found. The students interviews surfaced some interesting problems - dog waste left in bags along the trails, a disc golf course creating disc collisions with trail walkers, icy sidewalks and windshields on frosty winter days. Two ideas rose to the top: a tool for flinging dog waste off the trail instead of bagging it (Wells is small enough this is genuinely viable), and a sign walkers to watch for flying discs near the disc golf course. Students shaped their concepts in playdough or cardboard, then sketched and measured them, noting the parameters of what they were designing - and the group talked through what would and wouldn't be possible given injection molding. 

Session 3 - Making (in-person, June 2026): With an injection machine, an air compressor, a standing shredder, and a selection of to-shred and already-shredded plastics - the school parking lot had transformed into a place for Wells students to get experience recycling. This session also became one of the pilot's clearest lessons: while building custom molds is a capability Delve is working to stand up, the investment it takes doesn't yet fit within the available funding for school programming. The day ran as a hands-on micro-recycling session using the molds Delve already had, closer to what Delve now offers as a single-session LoopLAB workshop - and the students were still fully invested, learning and running the equipment to make buttons and combs of their own. Teachers connected the morning of and decided to bring all 15 students, across every grade in the school into the session together, taking advantage of the flexibility that comes with end-of-school-year celebrations. Students put on safety gear and helped sort plastic pulled from the school's recycling bin. In rotating groups, they mixed their own colors and cycled through operating the injection machine themselves - loading it, pressing the button, watching the piston come down and push plastic into the mold.After every injection, the group voted on whether it had worked - and cheered together when we had our first successful mold fill. 

Proof

Sessions 1 and 2 included all 6 students enrolled at WILDways at the time - the school's full cohort, not a sample of it.

Session 3 brought in the elementary school too, bringing participation up to 15 students and all 3 teachers - the whole of Wells' student population, in one afternoon.

20 combs and 75+ buttons made from plastic collected in the Cariboo, including school recycling-bin plastic sorted by the students themselves - enough for every student and teacher in Wells to walk away with something they made. 

Worksheets from session 2 (design sketches, measurements, notes) and photos from all three sessions are on file. 

Teacher testimonial, Devon Macdonald, WILDways High School: "Emma's work centers possibilities, and a care for environment and community. She encouraged students to design for and engage with their community, which brought about new connections and at times surprising results."

    Key Learnings

    This pilot tested nearly every dimension of what it takes to bring micro-recycling into a school - not just the workshop itself, but the scheduling, the teacher relationship, the funding realities, the equipment logistics, and whether the process actually holds up across a full range of ages and comfort levels. Some of what it confirmed: 

    • Working directly with the teacher to shape a session around actual coursework is a real asset - it meant the programming wasn't a one-off add-on, it was something that connected to what students were already learning.

    • Visiting three times, rather than once, meant Delve could bring real-world problem-solving into the process - going out, researching the community, working through design constraints - in a way a single session doesn't have room for.

    • The model holds up across a full range of ages in the same room, from kindergarten through high school, without needing to be split or simplified by grade - a useful finding for a school and town this size, and not something programming built elsewhere and dropped in usually gets to test.

    This pilot is part of what's shaping LoopLAB's 2027 programming. If you're exploring where your organization could fit into that, let's talk.