A student walks in with a bag of bottle caps they've been saving. By the end of the workshop, it's a comb or a button. Something they made themselves out of waste plastic.

Every object made in a looplab workshop starts as plastic that was headed for a landfill or the ocean.

Local plastic destined for landfill

Collected directly from the communities Delve serves through partnerships with regional government, local businesses, keen community members, and LoopLAB participants. Every piece was headed to landfill before LoopLAB transformed it into a button or comb.

Ocean Plastic from BC's Coastline

Retired oyster basket material from shellfish farms in Comox and Sooke, source through a BC-based ocean cleanup partner. Plastic that would either break down in the marine environment or be stockpiled for perpetuity instead gets a second life in the LoopLAB studio.
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LoopLAB is a 3 hour workshop that follows the micro-recycling process: sorting plastic, shredding it, molding it, and watching it transform under heat and pressure into something new. Built to align with BC's Applied Design, Skills, and Technologies (ADST) curriculum, it's delivered partly in the classroom and partly inside Delve's mobile studio - a fully equipped micro-recycling setup that travels to communities most hands-on STEM programming never reaches.

Students work with local plastic waste - some collected from their own school or community, some reclaimed ocean plastic from BC's coast - and walk away with proof that small-scale recycling can have a very real impact.

By the end of the session, those bottle caps have been transformed in front of their eyes. An exciting discovery about what's possible when you think about waste as a resource.

Bring LoopLAB to Your Group

For educators, community groups, conference organizers, and others interested in hosting a LoopLab session.

Book a Session

Become a LoopLAB Sponsor

Help fund hands-on workshops that turn local plastic into something students make and keep.

Explore Sponsorship

Delve's work has been featured by CBC Daybreak North, the CleanBC Plastics Action Fund, and Northern Development Initiative Trust - recognition that's grown alongside Delve Recycled itself.

LoopLAB has delivered programming across BC and Alberta - including a multi-school collaboration in Prince George with the Northern BC Makers Collective, a three-session design series with WildWays Highschool in Wells, and a curriculum-tied environmental career and microrecycling presentation in a Calgary middle 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."

— Devon Macdonald, WildWays High School, Wells, BC

See everywhere Delve Recycled has been featured →

Our 2027 LoopLAB Goal

Delve's target for 2027 is 30 workshops across 4+ communities in Western Canada - meeting rural students where they are, in the communities they live in, outside of the urban centers where access to unique infrastructure and programming are limited.

For companies operating in these communities, it's a visible, hands-on presence in the towns where trust and local relationships are necessary. For students, it's early exposure to unique equipment, technical problem-solving, and a different way of thinking about a material - plastic waste - that everyone deals with every day.

The goal is built on demonstrated demand, and will become a schedule once funding is secured. Each sponsor's investment funds specific, dedicated workshops in the communities they choose - not a shared pool, and not workshops that were happening anyway.

Help Fund LoopLAB 2027

LoopLAB is designed and delivered by Emma Swabey, founder of Delve Recycled - a Professional Agrologist with 15 years in Canada' s resource and waste industries, based in Williams Lake, BC.