In a remote rural village in Kenya or Malawi, you won’t find a toy store, but you’ll probably find a shop selling soda. That fact inspired an idea: What if old soda bottles and other packaging could be transformed into toys that children can use for learning?
A new series of designs that turn old packages into simple educational tools could give kids who don’t have access to preschool a better chance at learning how to count or read. They were created as a concept for the design firm IDEO.org’s Amplify challenges, which asked for ways to help children in low-income areas thrive in the first five years of life.
In one concept, called Bottle Stack, short bottles turn into blocks that can be stacked to learn numbers or spell words. “You can start with your name or simple words, and since you can stack the bottles, you can also make basic sentences,” says Bricola.
In another, a bottle becomes a truck that moves with wheels made from bottle caps. “We plan to have a white label on the truck, and invite children to draw their own picture,” he says. “It’s more about creativity.
This Clever Packaging Turns Waste Into Educational Toys [FastCoexist]