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Draft storyAt the bio plant

The smallest crew

Eddie finds out who the bio plant’s smallest workers really are.

A draft: the words and pictures are waiting for an educator’s review.

Who’s in it

Meet everyone in Gullbrae

The story

Eddie holds a tiny yellow toy vest and looks puzzled while Amina smiles beside him on the bio plant visitor terrace, with sealed tanks behind a closed fence.

On the bio plant visitor terrace, Eddie held up a tiny yellow vest. He wondered how the smallest workers at the plant could ever wear uniforms.

Amina opens a dark green teaching portfolio on a low wooden table for Zara and her teacher Isla, showing a drawing of a sealed dome tank and a magnified picture of soft oval shapes.

Amina welcomed Zara and her teacher Isla to a low table. She opened her green teaching portfolio so they could look safely, well away from the real tanks.

Amina points to the tank drawing in her portfolio with one hand and to the real closed tank beyond the fence with the other, while Zara and Isla watch.

Amina explained that the real tank is sealed, with no air inside. Tiny living things called microorganisms break down the food scraps in there, without any oxygen.

Zara, with Isla beside her, sticks a small plain cream tab under the tank picture in the portfolio, and another under the magnified picture.

Zara stuck one small label under the tank picture and another under the magnified microorganisms. Isla and Amina helped her put each one in the right place.

For grown-ups: The two labels are: the sealed tank, where food scraps are broken down without oxygen; and microorganisms, the tiny living things that do the breaking down, drawn much bigger than real life. The tiny vest is Eddie’s joke; there are no tiny people at the plant.

Eddie smiles and holds the tiny yellow vest next to the portfolio while Amina points to the picture of microorganisms and Zara and Isla laugh kindly.

Eddie laughed at his own guess. The smallest workers were far too tiny to see, and they did not need hi-vis jackets at all.

Amina: “The tiny workers do the breaking down. We look after the conditions.”

Isla and Zara clip the portfolio open beside a small tablet showing a local guidance page, while Amina nods, with the sealed tanks still behind the closed fence.

To finish, Isla and Zara set the portfolio beside a tablet with local guidance on it, to check how food scraps are collected where they live.

Isla: “What could we do differently before it becomes waste?”

Draft, 20 October 2026. The words and pictures are not yet reviewed by an educator. The story follows the outline in our story guide.

The real-life bit

At a bio plant, food waste is broken down by microorganisms inside a sealed tank, without oxygen. Saving good food comes first, and how food scraps are collected depends on your council’s own rules. Gullbrae is made up. Your council’s own rules are the ones to follow.

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