A good news story out of Melbourne has inspired Evandale pupil Taryn Farrell to collect more than 12,000 plastic lids to print prosthetic hands for children in developing countries.
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The 11-year-old began collecting the lids in July after the Envision initiative in Melbourne was reported on and has collected enough to build about 20 limbs.
She grew her initiative from one bucket at Evandale Primary School to several places collecting plastic lids for her and holding collection days, including the Launceston General Hospital.
"Mum showed me a news article about it and I thought it was a good idea," she said.
"It's kind of joyful to know what i'm doing is helping other people."
The grade 5 pupil has roped in her entire family too, they all sit watching television and sort them into colours.
She has thousands more to sort but she dropped off about 6600 to Launceston's Envision to print the limbs.
About 500 to 700 lids build one prosthetic hand.
Envision have two 3D printers they use to print the individual prosthetic limbs, after exact measurements have been sent in for limbs for the in need children.
The organisation's supervisor Dylan Oakenfull said since people had heard about the initiative they were collecting lids and dropping them in frequently.
"The hands a lot of the time go through Rotary and Lions and they give them and outsource them to places like Cambodia where there's lots of unexploded landmines," he said.
"They'll find a candidate who needs a hand and then they'll take measurements and what kind of hand they need and then once we're got the measurements and specifications the hands are scaled in the 3D software and printed."
Taryn's mum Jess Dennis said there is about 250 collectors in Tasmania but her daughter got excited when she heard they would be printing the limbs locally.
Ms Dennis said the little project her daughter got the family into was huge but exciting and Taryn was learning.
"She asked can we do that and I'm like yeah sure, thinking it's going to be a few hundred lids every now and again," she said.
"We've had 12,000 lids in our house and we were looking like where is all the bottles, that's a whole lot of bottles.
"We'll go to athletics and people will be like we've got heaps heaps of lids in the car and she comes homes with little bags, and barbecues take the lids."
She said the initiative had snowballed, as the first month they collected 500, then 1000, then 4000 before collecting 7000 lids last month.