Seasons of Science helps teach about recycling

Above, Amelia and Sophia Malik color plastic that will be shrunk down in the oven. Below, members of the biology research team teach about microplastics.
Daily Record photo by Dalton Sweat

Jill Zipperer (right) is a PhD student at Texas State University. She is part of the Seasons for Science program. 'I'm a former fifth grade science teacher, so any opportunity that I get to connect community members, both adults and kids, with science, especially when they're not expecting to learn about it, it is the purpose of my life is to help to spread the joy of science.'
Daily Record photo by Dalton Sweat

Certain types of plastic don’t recycle well. In fact, that is true of many types of plastic. The Seasons of Science event hosted by Texas State University’s Daniel-Bucklin Biology Education Research Group sought to teach children about plastics and show them some fun ways to re-use the types that don’t recycle well.

One of the activities allowed children to color on plastic and then heat it up so it would shrink into what was transformed into a button for a shirt.

“It is a fully free, family- friendly activity where we are promoting science and biology education within our communities,” Jill Zipperer, who hosted the Seasons of Science event at Roughhouse Brewing, said. “… We have two different crafts that we're doing. One is taking old recycled magazines and using a button maker, so we're repurposing those magazines into new art, where people can choose what their buttons look like. And then we're using recycled plastics to create shrinky dinks. There are certain types of plastics – specifically type six. So if you look at the back or the underside of your plastics, and it has a triangle with a six on it, you can use that and cut it out and decorate it, put it in the oven for a certain amount of time, and it actually creates a homemade trinket.”

Zipperer is a PhD student in Aquatic Resources and Integrative Biology. She was using the event to gather data to help further her dissertation as well.

“My dissertation is focused on bridging the gap between scientists and their local community,” Zipperer said. “So some of my other studies are related to service learning courses that biology students are taking part in. … We are actually collecting data on adult community members perceptions and opinions of science and scientists within their communities,” Zipperer said. “So I have some different forms of data collection where I'm asking for people's opinions about what they feel scientists do for their communities, what their personal emotions are and where they would prefer to allocate their resources towards science within the community. So I'm getting a couple of different perspectives from them, but then I'm going to be able to compare and see if there are disconnects between the scientists and the community members, seeing how we can bridge that gap.”

Zipperer was at Shady Llama in Wimberley before going to Roughhouse Brewing. She said the goal was the find people in their natural day-to-day life as opposed to only finding people who are interested in science to begin with.

For those interested in Seasons for Science, look up TX Science Peers on Facebook or Instagram or search for the Daniel- Bucklin Biology Education Research Group at Texas State University.