Page 22 - Litter Toolkit

4.3

Plastic

Plastic is all around us, it’s everywhere. It would be a pupils to take packaging out of the canteen, as well as
challenge to live without it as the number of everyday reducing packaging options for sale in the first place. ACTIONS: Let’s Go
products made from plastic is immense. Pupils have been financially encouraged to use reusable
cups for water instead of buying a bottle and an iced Look around your school and make a list of every
Because so much plastic is littered, it has become a lemon water dispenser installed. Pupils have also been item made from plastic. Make a list of alternatives
serious threat to the planet. A hundred years ago there encouraged to use washable salad bowls. and consider making a swap.
was no plastic, but now we find it in the ocean, around
our coastlines and in our cities and countryside. Pupils from Magor Church in Wales Primary School ran Investigate how much plastic waste your school
an activity entitled ‘No Plastic, That’s fantastic!’ They generates. Think of ways this can be reduced.
Dr Anthony Andrady, a plastics expert, said in the early undertook a plastic audit and created a pile of plastic
2000’s: ‘Except for a small amount that has been classroom items to highlight how reliant the school is on Has your school got a recycling facility for plastics?
incinerated, every bit of plastic manufactured in the plastic. If so, is it being used? Can you encourage pupils to
world for the last fifty years or so still remains. It’s use it more?
somewhere in the environment.’ They involved the whole school in a plastic free day,
banning plastic pens, computers and even furniture!
Because of this, what we do with our plastic waste is
very important. Plastic bottles can be recycled in our Everybody was suddenly very aware of the amount of Wrap
schools, homes and communities or be reused in a plastic they use in everyday life and started to think
variety of ways. about what alternatives there are and how practical Pledge for Plastics
they might be. The pupils also considered where
School examples plastic actually comes from and the environmental
consequences of the production process. MCS Plastic Challenge
Caerleon Comprehensive pupils in Newport discovered
they were generating too much plastic waste. In just one Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Plasmawr hired a plastic bottle Plastic Pollution Coalition
area of the school, almost 1,000 plastic bottles were recycling machine. The machine dispensed a raffle prize
being recycled every week and others were going to token for every 50th bottle deposited. In one term, British Plastics Federation
landfill after being treated as litter. more than 1,000 bottles were saved from being littered education programme
or sent to landfill, and there were plenty of very happy
They have drastically reduced their litter by not allowing prize-winners! Greenpeace ‘Nine ways to reduce plastic use’