Students make puppets with waste material at St Xavier’s High School in Patna on Monday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Students were ecstatic as they created puppets out of waste material in an inter-school competition — Katran — at St Xavier’s High School on Monday.

City-based institute Pahal, which grooms aspirants for the entrance examinations of NIFTs and NID, organised the competition to make students understand the importance of recycling waste materials. In its second edition, around 500 students from St Xavier’s High School, Notre Dame Academy, Radiant International School, Delhi Public School and other schools in the city took part in the competition.

The creativity of the children was at its best as they made puppets out of eggshells, shampoo bottles, old magazines, newspapers, discarded cartons and clothes among other things. Traditional Rajasthani puppets, puppets resembling Japanese dolls and cartoon characters like Angry Birds were among the creations.

Kumar Vishal, one of the organisers, said: “This competition is to make the students aware of recycling things. By taking part in the competition, they can instantly generate ideas on how to make craft items using waste products. Today, they have used different materials like used bottles, discarded cartons, old CDs, newspapers and magazines that we generally throw away and raise pollution levels. So, we are trying to help the children realise the importance of recycling.”

“This year, the number of participants has almost doubled and we hope to get better response in the third edition,” he said.

Class IX student of Don Bosco Academy Kumari Ishika, who took part in the competition with her classmate Priyamvada, said: “I never thought that I could make puppets by using stuff like used tissue paper, old magazines, newspapers and plastic bags. I used shoeboxes and old paintbrushes to make my puppet.”

Class X students of Delhi Public School Sumbul Shireen and Shristi Kanodiya made two puppets and named them Cutie Dragon and MagneRobot. Explaining how she made Cutie Dragon, Shireen said: “I have used recycled bottles to make the body of the puppet, recycled paper cups to make its mouth and ice cream cones to make its tail. I have used two big buttons to make its eyes.”

Another Class X student of Delhi Public School, Devesh Anand, and classmate Shubham made an Egyptian doll with chocolate wrappers, empty cold drink bottles, waste silver foil and wooden cut-outs.