After Hurricane Helene, Buncombe County was without potable water for over a month, requiring students and staff to drink from disposable plastic water bottles. Quickly, the plastic started to pile up - but a clever teacher at Eblen Intermediate school decided to use them for a creative purpose.
As students learned about different science concepts through building structures, these empty and discarded bottles turned into the perfect building materials to re-create three classic buildings. Big Ben, The Eiffel Tower, and the Empire State Building all stood in their plastic-bottle glory, recreated even down to the streets they stand on and nearby buildings. The Eiffel tower, the largest of the three, stood at over 101 inches tall and, in total, over 600 water bottles were used. The lesson injected geography and environmental science into their physics lessons.
“We wanted to use these bottles for something instead of letting them go to waste,” said teacher Mr. Gibbs. “I thought it would be perfect for a lesson like this.”
Every day, teachers at BCS come up with creative lesson plans that engage students in new ways. Nothing goes to waste - not even plastic water bottles.