Secret Harbour scouts collect lids for limbs

Secret Harbour Scouts Group is hoping to improve the lives of disadvantaged children while also protecting the environment by collecting small bottle lids to make prosthetic limbs.

The Lids4Kids campaign is a nation-wide initiative involving Melbourne-based not-for-profit Envision Hands, processing plastic bottle lids and using 3D printer software to make them into brightly-coloured mobility aids for children.

Scout leader Cathy Tozer said the aim of Scouts was to encourage young people to act in consideration of others and play a constructive role in their communities.

“Part of our Scouts ethos is the message of peace and trying to instil the right ideas in young people when it comes to things like helping others and the importance of recycling,” she said.

“Currently bottle tops are too small to be recycled in WA and they end up in landfill.

“So by collecting the bottle tops from milk, water and soft-drinks, washing and sorting them, and sending them to be made into prosthetic limbs — it’s a win-win really.

Ms Tozer said Scouts were primary youth-led, with the members of the Scouts Youth Council deciding what activities the group participates in.

“The kids decide what they want to do and this is one thing they really wanted to get behind,” she said. “I think it’s really great for the kids to be helping other kids like this.”

The Scouts encouraged residents and businesses to join the project by dropping lids labelled washed or unwashed to collection points at Paul Papalia’s office on Oasis Drive in Secret Harbour or Coles Secret Harbour customer service desk.

Ray White Rockingham Baldivis have also joined the project with both offices serving as collection points.

“We have some local schools as well as some of the cafes down in Rockingham already involved in collecting for us,” office manager Amy Sullivan said.

“Such a simple thing can make such a huge difference in peoples lives.”