The Milwaukee Section of SPE has been sponsoring the Best use of Plastics and the Best Knowledge of Plastics awards at the STEM Forward Future Cities Competition for many years. This annual event is usually held at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. This year’s event was held virtually because of Covid. In the past live events at MSOE it is always rewarding for our team to engage with these young people who are the next generation of engineers and leaders. It is enlightening to see the great ideas and creativity from the students. Over 40 elementary schools competed in this year’s event. There were 28 award and prizes given out to the schools. The Milwaukee SPE sponsorship of these awards gets these young people thinking about plastics in their everyday life. The Milwaukee SPE judges were Mary Kosarzycki, Wes Stephens and Ray Ciezki.
The Best Knowledge of Plastics Award went to the Mount Calvary Lutheran school team with their model named RE. The picture of their model and their plastic processing plant is shown below. Their plastic processing plant shreds scrap plastics and extrudes them into pellets and other useful forms to build housing components. These young people showed us some creative ideas and knowledge of plastic processing.
The Best Use of Plastics Award went to the Golda Meir school team with their model named Rey Moore. Shown below is a picture of their model. Their team made an extra effort to use a plastic material in many areas of the model.
