IV Teacher´s Award Graz 2025

Here are the winners of the IV Teacher´s Award Graz 2025! 🏆

Last week the Industriellenvereinigung Steiermark (Industrial Association of Styria) and the Department for Education and Integration of the City of Graz honored outstanding performances of pedagogues/educators in 3 categories for their projects with children in pre-schools, primary and secondary schools.
The beautiful council hall in the city hall of Graz was a wonderful frame for this great event. In addition to the title, the winners also received a prize (Graz vouchers, each worth 1,000 euros). 

GAW technologies sponsored the category "Elementary Education". The winning team from Kindergarten Weinzöttlstraße presented their project and how it all started… with the kids! After some unwrapping of equipment for the rooms they were asking questions and spoke about their concerns: “What do we do now with all this plastics garbage?” 
Led by their teachers, they discussed the topic and decided to make something meaningful out of the waste. They started to build very creative figures and transformed them into comforting LED lights statues called “night-watchman” that can light up your room (and your hearts!💚) in darker hours.

It was wonderful seeing that also the youngest in our generation are already thinking about and acting on major issues / global problems like pollution, recycling and savings of resources. ♻️ 🌍Especially the recycling of plastic waste that would normally end on landfill or in incineration plants is of importance to GAW – see our breakthrough plastics recycling technology CreaSolv® for multilayered packaging films.

Sigrid Tertinegg / Marketing Manager at GAW technologies reflected:
“Especially early childhood education in the first years is crucial and formative for life, so elementary education has an enormously important function to arouse the curiosity within children for science, technology and research. Also the basis for an understanding of recycling and sustainability is formed within this period. Particularly in times of major global challenges we truly believe that high-quality education is an important part of the solution.”

Many thanks to the City of Graz, IV and all the sponsors for putting outstanding pedagogues in the spotlight - and Congratulations to the winners!

Picture Credit: Foto Fischer

September 2025