BRICK BEASTS: Special needs learners win national prize for turning plastic waste into sports gear

Five learners at Cape Recife High School built a machine to make 3D-printing filament from discarded plastic, producing shin pads and other sporting gear for those who cannot afford it.

Their project, developed by a team calling itself the Brick Beasts, has won the 2026 Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition, beating 142 other entries from public schools across South Africa. They were the only Eastern Cape school in the final 20, and it was their first attempt.

When Samsung Africa Chief Executive Simon Lee announced third place, then second, the five boys from Cape Recife High School thought they had lost.

“We assumed that we had just lost the competition,” said Kukhanya Mbebe, 18, a Grade 10 learner. “So when we realised that the CEO was trying to call out our name, we were like, ‘Oh wow!’”

Alongside Mbebe, the Brick Beasts are Hein Victor, 16, also in Grade 10, and Grade 11 learners Justin Burmeister, Dale Webster and Seth Klopper, all 18.

Their English teacher and robotics coach, Samantha Bell, said: “I just shut my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. And then I turned and I saw Kukhanya sitting with his hands over his mouth.”

The team won the 2026 Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition at a national awards ceremony in Centurion on 2 October. The competition is run with the Department of Basic Education.

Cost

The winning project began with cost: a roll of 3D-printing filament sells for about R280. Three of the five boys own 3D printers, as does Tyron Greyling, a former robotics teacher who started the programme at the school, so the team wondered whether they could make their own filament.

“There are machines like this that exist, but we built our own machine,” said Bell. It sits in a computer tower with a Perspex panel so onlookers can watch it work. A two-litre bottle slides onto a wooden dowel and feeds between two bearings, which slice it into a thin strip of plastic without using a blade. The strip runs through a heated extruder that shapes it to the thickness a 3D printer needs, then winds onto a large gear that forms the spool.

They also incorporated colour into the filament. Of the dyes they tested, turmeric proved strongest, producing yellow pieces. For a pinkish shade, they grew beetroot in a garden with their Samsung mentor, Malik Mpho Malope, then boiled, sterilised and jarred it with help from consumer studies teacher Lisa Neuper. From there, the boys programmed the 3D printer.

This year’s brief set two themes. The first, environmental sustainability through technology, asked learners to reuse resources without significant damage and to transform discarded materials creatively into products of higher value. The second asked how sport and technology could improve lives and make communities more inclusive. The Brick Beasts took on both.

For Mbebe, the answer lay on the soccer field, where Cape Recife learners play schools from across the metro.

“We noticed that in some tournaments the kids use cardboard as their shin pads because it is quite expensive to purchase them,” he said.

So the boys printed shin pads from bottles. Early prints were inconsistent, but they fixed that over several months and have since delivered pads to a few schools and a children’s home. Next on the list is a juvenile detention centre that has a soccer team.

The range grew to whistles, a dumbbell filled with cement, rugby kicking tees tested by Nelson Mandela University’s Madibaz rugby club, and other gear.

Fellow learner Mikhael Ramasamy, an Eastern Province special schools table tennis player, praised the weight and durability of the Brick Beasts’ table tennis bat.

One request came from much closer to home. A teacher pointed out that when learners with cerebral palsy sit in their wheelchairs, their feet can drag on the ground, so the boys designed foot cups to hold them in place and printed them from recycled bottles.

Regional sporting heroes

Why sport? Mbebe points to two sporting heroes from the region.

“Most of the players in the national teams have stories to tell that they couldn’t afford certain things, and they deserved a chance to play,” he said. “So we said, ‘How about we find the next Siya Kolisi? How about we find the next Ronwen Williams? Let’s give kids a second chance to dream and hope.’”

A month-long plastic bottle drive at the school with cash prizes brought in 1,020 bottles from beach clean-ups and other sources.

“We were just bamboozled,” Mbebe said. There were far more than the Brick Beasts project could use and learners from the school’s primary section helped to wash and count them.

Bell, who has coached the boys since they were in Grade 8, said they often worked through break times with other robotics members pitching in. Only five could go to the final ceremony, however, which Mbebe called the hardest part: “We’ve always done everything together.”

In rugby and soccer, Bell said, Cape Recife usually played other special needs schools.

“In robotics we are competing on a mainstream level. They’re just as good as any other learner. They’re just as strong as any other learner at some of the top schools in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) – and in the country as well now.”

Principal Erica Maritz said she was at a karate tournament when Bell’s message that the boys had won arrived.

“I just started crying. Everybody thought there was something wrong with me,” she said. She credits Greyling, who has since moved to Pearson High School, for building the programme.

“It’s still his baby,” she said. “For a school like ours, that has 200 high school learners, to compete nationally with schools that have so much money, that have every resource that you can think of, I think they are just absolutely wonderful.”

The school won R100,000 worth of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) equipment, and each learner and teacher on the team received a Samsung Flip8 phone and Fit3 watch.

Off to Dakar

At the end of the month, the Brick Beasts head to Dakar, Senegal, to take part in Samsung’s programme at the 2026 Youth Olympic Games, which open on 31 October. Samsung is a worldwide Olympic partner.

“A huge thank you to Samsung for giving us this amazing opportunity,” said Bell. “To Lefa Makgato, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager, thank you for believing in us and backing the Brick Beasts every step of the way. And to our mentor, Malik, thank you for your patience, guidance and support. We couldn’t have done this without you.”

Mbebe knows the stigma of not attending a mainstream school.

“When you say you come from a special needs high school, it is instantly assumed that you are incapable of certain things,” he said.

He wants the win to be a statement of encouragement to younger children at Cape Recife and at every special needs school.

“You are able to do this. You are capable enough to do this.” DM