GREEN TEAM

Green Team is a foundation that collects plastic bottle caps to help children with cancer.

We are collecting caps from schools, homes, and the “Bank of Caps” every week. The Bank of Caps is a place where people donate and store many caps for recycling.

We clean, sort, and recycle all the caps carefully to give them a new and useful life.

Sometimes we are making creative objects like toys, bracelets, keychains, and decorations. These colorful objects show how recycling can be fun, creative, and good for the planet.

We are also sending many caps to recycling centers. The centers give money that helps children with cancer and their families to pay for medicine, treatments, and other important needs.

Our Green Team family is growing every month, and many volunteers are joining our activities and projects.

We believe that small actions can make a big change for the planet and for people.

Green Team is working with love, energy, and hope to protect nature and support brave children who need our help.

"Our objective in Green Team is help to create a better world without contamination. How will we do it? We will collect bottle caps, which are often forgotten. We will support society in 3 ways:

1. We will give talks in primary and secondary schools to teach about environmental education.

2. We will collect bottle caps to reuse them and give them a new life.

3. We will donate some of the bottle caps to companies that help children with cancer."

This campaign is aimed specifically at teenagers between the ages of twelve and fifteen.

This is because our campaign uses colors that we believe are perfect for attracting the attention of teenagers. In addition, they are still leaving childhood behind and entering “adulthood,” so we believe it will be easy to talk to them about the importance of the environment and caring for it. Another reason why they are the right audience is because at that age they have incredible imaginations, which can help us come up with more beneficial ideas.

Within the campaign, we believe it is important to raise awareness about the problem we are seeking to solve, and we think it is an excellent idea to start with these generations.

People always say, “The way they see you is the way they treat you,” and they are right.

Appearance is very important — it reflects who you are. The same goes for campaigns: we must show our goals, work, and values.

At Green Team, we know this, and that’s why here is the science behind our colors.

Dante

Dante is a very important member of our campaign. He’s a dinosaur who survived the extinction of his species, but he felt sad because he couldn’t do anything to stop that disaster.

That’s why now, with a new chance, he wants to do everything he can — with his little hands — to save the planet and help people.

Dante always wants to visit middle schools to talk to students about helping the planet and explain the great things that happen when we recycle bottle caps, like helping other children receive medical treatments — something he has also benefited from himself.

Dante speaks to kids from his own experience and always asks with a smile:

“Would you help me collect bottle caps?”

1. Upcycling workshop

We will organize creative workshops where we can transform plastic caps into useful or decorative items such as pencil holders or plant pots. This activity might help us promote creativity and show that waste can become something valuable.

Source: NOAA Marine Debris Program – “Preventing Ocean Trash: Upcycling Activity” (https://marine-debris-site-s3fs.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com)

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2. Social Donation Program – “Caps for Chemotherapy”

We will collect and donate plastic caps to foundations that exchange them for chemotherapy treatments for children with cancer. It may take around 450,000 caps to fund one chemotherapy session, so our campaign should encourage as many people as possible to participate.

Source: Plastics Smart Japan – “Recycle Caps & Save the Children” (https://plastics-smart.env.go.jp/case/en/70)

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3. Create Bottle Cap Murals

We could use part of the collected caps to design a colorful mural that can represent environmental awareness. This artwork will help inspire others to recycle and might become a symbol of our campaign’s effort.

Source: Our Canada Project – “Bottle Cap Murals” (https://ourcanadaproject.ca/place/bottle-cap-murals)

One of our main activities would be going to schools, especially middle and elementary schools. There, we try to get students to join our campaign and would help implement the bottle cap collection, so they could do their part to help save the planet and, why not, bring a smile to a child.

We would contact the school and ask if they would like us to give talks and set up our bottle cap collection campaign. When they give us the go-ahead, we go with full energy and bring our own containers or boxes where students would put the caps they would recycle.

For example, there is Official Middle School No. 485 Dr. José María Luis Mora, the first middle school where we implement this bottle cap collection. With the help of the history class (which would take interest in our slogan) and, of course, the students’ effort, we manage to collect approximately 26,000 caps. The Bottle Cap Bank kindly come to the school to pick them up.

It was a big achievement for our campaign, and the students feel really proud. They say that every time they collected 3,000 caps — the equivalent for one chemotherapy — they would feel very happy.

The campaign will promote various awareness talks aimed at teenagers on caring for the environment. There will also be a suggestion box so that they can contribute their own ideas, which will then be considered for inclusion in the campaign.

Here is a link to a video that our teammate Bianca (and others) made for the campaing