From Lab to Adventure: Repurposing Production Waste for Youth Activities

Although Pipelife's advanced manufacturing technologies and processes result in minimal production waste, there is still a small amount of material that can be challenging to utilize, and repurposing offers an optimal solution for such cases. Partnering with local youth institutions in Otrokovice, Pipelife Czechia's team has come up with an ingenious way how to give scrap its second life while producing plenty of joy and creativity in the process.

_{Fostering Creativity in Children and Young Adults}

For more than 10 years, Pipelife Czechia's team has been collaborating with the Children and Youth House Sluníčko Otrokovice. The center offers an extensive range of free-time activities for children and young adults of various ages. Last year alone, the Youth House had 94 different interest groups and organized 87 events with more than 23,000 participants. 

"Children are inherently very creative; they have an amazing imagination," says Eva Psencikova, Director of the Children and Youth House Sluníčko Otrokovice, when asked to explain the center's popularity. "The current trends in education focus more on developing information technology skills. But when children are given the opportunity to create, to work with various materials, they always enjoy it very much."

_{Pipes Enter Playgrounds} 

Some of the Youth House's most in-demand activities are field camps, focusing on developing children's creativity and dexterity via games and other outdoor activities. Preparing such camps requires a lot of material, and that's where Pipelife's products have come in. Plastic scrap and pipe cuttings are excellent for creating various camp supplies and tools for the kids. 

"An important part of the camps is the role-play activities where participants can feel like becoming knights or explorers. We care very much for the safety of all participants, so we use soft materials like plastic for props and tools and also teach children how to handle them correctly," Psencikova explains. 

As another example, the Youth House prepared outdoor adventure trails for local children during the COVID pandemic when group activities were not allowed. Setting up various obstacles across the Otrakovice town allowed children to play and develop their strength and coordination in a safe way. Pipe cuttings of various dimensions were used to design elements that required jumping, climbing, crawling, and even slaloming to be overcome. 

_{When Scrap Gets Second Chance}

All the materials donated to the Youth House come from Pipelife Czechia's quality assurance labs, where product tests are carried out. Once the tests are over, the Youth House's team can choose which cuttings to use for upcoming activities — for example, long and thin pipes are in demand for making field barriers, gates and similar constructions.

"Since most of our employees are from Otrokovice and its surroundings, and their children attend the youth center, we see this partnership as closing the circle," says Lenka Foltynova, coordinator of the initiative and Director's Assistant at Pipelife Czechia. "It reduces waste, supports a good cause and illustrates how our products can be used in various ways."

While the Children and Youth House Sluníčko Otrokovice is the most active organization repurposing Pipelife's products, it is not the only one. Production scrap has also been donated to local primary schools for class experiments and other purposes. In addition, Pipelife Czechia has been supporting the Children and Youth House Sluníčko Otrokovice and other local youth organizations financially.  

"We definitely plan to keep up the current cooperation and extend it further," Foltynova says. "Although, at first sight, plastic pipes might not seem very interesting to children, we can see how they have become part of various exciting projects."