As part of the massive National School of the Arts festival, the students are helping share the message of reduce, reuse and recycle plastic as well as the universal message of The Dung Beetle Project. The Dung Beetle Project is known for its work in sharing education on how we can save the planet by being more environmentally minded. Not only is The Beetle a piece of art, but it also creates fuel from plastic and we could all do better finding similar ways of helping the planet and each other.

We are sharing this message of hope that together we can do something about the epidemic of plastic pollution.

The Dung Beetle Project fires up the start of the festival day with a performance & eco-demonstration on the NSA field at 8am with another performance at 12 noon. There is no capacity limit but we do advise you to get some tickets and join the festival all day.

Even your friends will say “We want to go see the Dung Beetle” when you tell them about this great initiative.

Don’t be toxic, be awesome! If you missed the show on Wednesday 4 March or Thursday 5 March, you can still catch it on Friday 6 March.

Info on bookings here. Come join us or follow us on social media.

Date : 5 and 6 March 2020
Time : 8am and 12pm
Venue : National School of the Arts

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Mike Jervis, one of the founders of the Dung Beetle Project and wife Laura sent their six – year-old Erin to this sprawling re-purposed suburban house under the trees of Johannesburg’s Greenside area.

The kids gathered around the Dung Beetle stage to eagerly learn from Mike about how they could be Beetle helpers, collecting the right plastic at home so it doesn’t end up polluting the environment. “The Beetle eats plastic numbers 2, 4, 5 and 6.” Mike explained by slowly showing the numbers on his hands and had the kids repeat after him. “I like the Beetle because it chews plastic”, Erin stated excitedly before running off with her friends.

The school uses the Reggio Emilia-inspired approach to teach kids aged 2-6 years old. According to the Scots College in Sydney Australia, the teaching system “is an innovative and inspiring approach to early childhood education, which values the child as strong, capable and resilient; rich with wonder and knowledge.” This system taps into the innate curiosity of children and drives a hands-on approach to learn through questioning and experience.

At Small World kids do lots of different activities, like drawing pictures to show how trees talk to each other or even pictures of them talking to nature directly.  They also learn to speak some of the twelve official languages in this country of 45 million people, all while helping develop their own curriculum in their own language.

Circled around the beetle, the kids were rapt by how they could be part of the plastic pollution solution by becoming aware of the ways that plastic could either be reused or given a suitable end in the belly of our recycled steel machine.

The following day, some of the kids dragged their parents to our event on the streets of Johannesburg’s arty Melville area, where the stage had been set up for the Afrikaburn-supported Streetopia event. In their hands were bags of plastic, dug out of their own trash, ready to feed the Beetle. The plastic they brought? Numbers 2, 4, 5 and 6.

Learn more about Small World school here and the types of plastic eaten by the Beetle in our handy “What The Plastic?” guide. Find the guide here.

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We facilitated a talk by Manape Shogole from the African Reclaimers Association, who is helping organize the informal waste picker groups around Johannesburg – bringing dignity and community support to the people working to keep our communities cleaner through small-scale recycling.

Paul Boyter on drums helped set the pace in the afternoon after the Dung Beetle crew did a short Q&A around their plastics-to-fuel, while Andrew the DJ spun vinyl.

Special thanks to Thandi O’Hagan and Natasha Davern who curated the stage and brought so many great vibes together, as well as everyone who came to participate, turn up, paint, weave memories and enjoy this fun and free chance to take back the city for our community.

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As a non-profit, community-based event, Streetopia Jozi is totally free and open for anyone to attend and enjoy. The streets will be filled with art, sculpture, music, market stalls and is a community and family affair. With it also being a space to highlight causes and social activism, The Dung Beetle Project will discuss the plastic problem and display our contemporary solution.

For more information about the event, visit the Streetopia Jozi website or Facebook page.

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The Camilla Plastic Ocean Plan incorporates science, art, and technology to change the conversation about plastic from one of despair to hope. The Film University of Babelsberg brought together thinkers, artists, and visual storytellers to explore ways we can change the conversation around plastic, and asked Dung Beetle Project Director Jeffrey Barbee to present on the value of art in science communication. Our message of hope, shared from our powered by plastic art stage, helps people everywhere see plastic differently and it was exciting to discover from the other presenters how people around the world are finding new ways to deal with plastic waste and create a new future. Discover more from our latest story on Alliance Earth’s website, the Dung Beetle Project’s parent organization.

To keep updated on our The Dung Beetle Project, subscribe to our newsletter or to support our initiative, donate here.

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When launching our Dung Beetle Project community stage that runs on plastic almost two years ago, we never imagined we would be building big machines and rolling out projects like our new offshoot ScarabTECH. With a lot of help and lots of hard work by our team, ScarabTECH moved into its new premises in the south of Johannesburg, South Africa this week.

From this base we will continue innovating and assembling our first South African-made beetle machines that can transform residential and industrial waste-plastic into energy. After that, we will be focusing our development on scaling up production of our machines on other continents so that people around the world can benefit from this useful technology.

The first commercial machine, which weighs about two tonnes, was dropped off at the ScarabTECH research and development factory from our original build site by a five-ton truck and crane system. The ability for these machines to be “plonked” down and working quickly is one of the things that sets ScarabTECH apart from its competitors. Machines that can process between 100 and 1000 Kgs of plastic a day generally take months (if not years) to build and assemble, and cost around three times more than ours. ScarabTECH will focus on production and innovation, while the Dung Beetle Project aims to bring these machines to where the plastic crisis is most acute, on beaches, in cities, and wherever some of the 400 million tons of plastic a year that humans create is dumped.

Bringing this technology to the world in a cheaper, more robust and more usable manner is one way to start making a real difference in reducing the amount of un-recycled plastic around the globe.

We know this is just a small step on the road to a plastic-free future for humanity, but for our team of committed beetles it was a great week to see lots of hard work finally coming together. We are excited to also announce the launch of the ScarabTECH website: www.scarabtech.com
The website answers your most pertinent questions and is available for everyone to share.
It’s an exciting time, but it will take all of us to fight the problem of single-use plastics.

If you want to understand more about pyrolysis technology and how it can help reduce the plastic pollution problem, you can read more at this useful link from Chemical and Engineering News.

Watch this space for more upcoming news and places where you can visit our new generation of working beetle machines, from beaches to recycling centres near you!

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The South West Indian Ocean has as much as 11 million tons of plastic dumped into it every year, usually through coastal rivers.   Along the 2400 kilometers of Mozambique’s coastline there is very little recycling and our partner, ParCo, is helping change that by cleaning up the beaches and rivers along the stunning Bazaruto archipelago.  The team met with local officials and gave a presentation to some of the 1200 delegates from organizations around the world.

The project links a pilot site using our technology in the town of Vilanculos, supported by ParCo Mozambique staff who are creating a #poweredbyplastic economy that pays people to remove plastic from beaches and turns it into a rural power initiative that provides electricity and fuels from the plastic. Vilanculos is the nearest town to the Bazaruto archipelago, one of Mozambique’s most famous national parks.  The park boasts amazing coral reefs, a vital pathway for migrating birds and is home to the mysterious dugong, a relative of the manatee.

By using our system to generate fuel and electricity directly from plastic, we hope to grow a recycling economy that can also use the heat and power from our machine to recycle the most hardy plastics and create economic drivers that create jobs while saving marine life and tourism from plastic pollution.

The conference theme, “Sustainable and Shared Use of the Ocean”, melded well with our initiative and we took advantage of the local and international attendance to get this project’s ball rolling.

At the end of May Alliance Earth board member Ana Alecia Lyman and Dung Beetle Project Director Jeffrey Barbee, alongside our partner, Juliet Lyon from the non profit organisation ParCo Mozambique unveiled our ground-breaking project to help clean ocean plastic in the Indian Ocean to delegates at the Growing Blue Conference in Maputo, Mozambique.

At the end of May Alliance Earth board member Ana Alecia Lyman and Dung Beetle Project Director Jeffrey Barbee, alongside our partner, Juliet Lyon from the non profit organisation ParCo Mozambique unveiled our ground-breaking project to help clean ocean plastic in the Indian Ocean to delegates at the Growing Blue Conference in Maputo, Mozambique.

The post The Dung Beetle Project Unveils Our New Plastic Initiative At The Rising Blue Conference. appeared first on The Dung Beetle Project.

While the stage churned out music by Jade Barbee, Lovely Day and the band HUMANWINE flames rose into the air and the students learned how waste plastic can be a powerful rural electricity solution and also about the benefits of recycling.

The visit is part of the Afrikaburn outreach program through their Blank Canvas Express initiative helping drive community science education through fiery fun in one of South Africa’s most economically challenged provinces. Helping bring the magic, the education and the music of South Africa’s most famous art festival to young minds thirsty for all three is what the Dung Beetle does best!

Kids from the Boesmanland High School in Pofadder, South Africa interact with the Dung Beetle Sculpture after the engagement talks from the Dung Beetle stage as part of the collaboration between Alliance Earth's Dung Beetle Project and the Afrikburn Art event for public outreach, called Blank Canvas Express. The waste plastic that poweres the stage is first shredded by the Plastisaurus Wrecks and then fed to power the Pyrolitic reation that runs the Dung Beetle Project's moving art stage within this recycled steel sculpture

The Dung Beetle stage on the move up Van Rynspas on it's way to the Afrikaburn Art Festival. The Dung Beetle stage is part of the collaboration between Alliance Earth's Dung Beetle Project and the Afrikburn Art event for public outreach, called Blank Canvas Express. The waste plastic that poweres the stage is fed to power the Pyrolitic reation that runs the Dung Beetle Projects moving art stage, creating science education that is #poweredbyplastic .

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If you would like to support the Dung Beetle on its important mission, you can donate here or sign up to receive updates on our progress.

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In the interview below, one of the youngest members of the team interviews Pierre (pops) Pretorius, who
is one of the people responsible for building the Dung Beetle. Join us as he answers the above
questions and more. Combating the plastic epidemic starts with educating young conservationist so
that they may inspire their peers.

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