People and places
A community project celebrating Earth Day Anthony Artist explains a fun experiment that raises awareness of important issues
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It started with a fish We promote recycling around our school, and the students reminded each other of the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling materials. We made promises to ourselves to reduce our usage of plastic straws, reuse plastic carrier bags, and recycle plastic bottles. But, is a promise enough? How can we get this message to our wider community? A fish growing around a Powerade wrapper was a powerful image. A beach littered with bottle tops was equally powerful. Whilst searching for other images for the students to view, I stumbled across a royalty-free image of a huge fish made from plastic bottles eating our planet. This would be too large to re-create, but could we make it from recycled bottle tops? Fish. Earth. Plastic. A message is born! Now was the time to start collecting bottle tops. Messages were sent to the school community using Seesaw, and collection boxes were placed around the school. We kept Spring |
Autumn
Earth Day is the perfect opportunity to think about our planet. It aims to encourage people across the world to become more environmentally friendly, and to reflect on the damage our actions cause to the planet. The theme for 2018 was End Plastic Pollution, with the aim of changing human attitudes and behaviours about plastics. In science lessons, we looked at images of beaches littered with plastic bottles. We saw seabirds caught up in six pack multi-pack plastic rings, and Atlantic puffins clutching yellow straws. We saw beaches around the world littered with cotton bud sticks, drink caps and lids, and other unidentifiable fragmented plastics. We also saw a fish growing around a Powerade wrapper, with the fish deformed and squeezed at the point of the wrapper. The students, who were six to ten year olds, were shocked and repulsed at our global actions. What can we do to make things better? How can we promote End Plastic Pollution?
| 2019
