Picchioni teaches about rubber recycling at primary school

"How many car tyres are thrown away each year in the Netherlands?" asked Professor Francesco Picchioni to children of group 7/8 at De Molenberg primary school in Grootegast. After calculating that that would be 16 million, all weighting approx. 9kg (of which 60% is rubber) he concluded that we throw away 90 million kilos of rubber a year! "And you can do a lot with that!".

Together with city councillor Marjan Sijperda and Theo Jurriens of the GasTerra Gasunie Truck, Picchioni kicked off the Recycling theme at this school, which is part of the Next Education project. The aim of Next Education project is to bring young children of primary schools into early contact with science, technology and research. The children of the six participating primary schools in the municipality of Westerkwartier were therefore given this short lesson by Professor Francesco Picchioni for a reason. He took them into the world of recycling rubber tyres to show how a cycle of (raw) materials works. The University of Groningen is one of the cooperating partners in the Next Education project, alongside the Municipality of Westerkwartier, the Quadraten Foundation, Science Linx, the RuG's Scholierenacademie and the Fablab. Based on a socially relevant theme, children learn to formulate a research question, make measuring instruments and then conduct research and report and present on it.