Hello everyone. I hope you and your families are all well. St. Vincent’s is a very Green school (which is something I am very proud of). Although I am sure that individually we can be even better! Plastic use (especially single-use plastic) is a massive issue concerning all of us, our environment, and specially our oceans.
A plastic cup can take 50 – 80 years to decompose. An estimated 13 billion plastic bottles are disposed of each year. Plastic bags and other plastic rubbish thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1 million sea creatures every year. Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy than burning it in an incinerator.
Even though we are already so, so good, there is always room for improvement. The Marine Conservation Society are a national charity making sure our seas are healthy, protected and pollution free. They have already removed over 11 Million pieces of litter from our beaches! This litter has not just been left there after fun days out, but has accumulated from around the country. This has been through travelling down drains, along rivers or canals and even just from flying through the air. In July The Marine Conservation Society are holding a Plastic Challenge. I have already signed up for myself; I am going to monitor my own use of plastic. Cutting out plastic from our everyday lives will be nearly impossible, but we have to try as much as we can. Here is the link to the Challenge.
This Plastic Challenge Checklist may help you.
Read this Living Without Plastic booklet to find out more.
Please post to let me know of anything that you do. Big changes or small, they all make such a huge difference. I am always looking for new ideas, hints and tips. Although it is a ‘challenge’ there is no individual prize, but a very large worldwide one. There will be more promotion of this in July but we would like you to start thinking about how you can make a difference right now. Thank you for all your hard work.
Mrs Knowler, on behalf of the Green Team
Hi Miss Knowler,
I have just signed up to the Marine Conservation Society Plastic Challenge. At home we are really trying hard to reduce single-use plastics but it is sometimes difficult because supermarkets tend to use a lot of packaging for fruits and vegetables for example, which is a shame… My mum actually wrote to Waitrose to ask them to remove packaging of essential foods, which is really not needed.
I will search for other ideas on how to reduce plastic use. Everyone please share your ideas too.
Hope you’re all well! ???
Hi Sebastiao. Well done on signing up. And a big well done for all of your efforts regarding reducing your plastic use. When we get back together we will talk about this in more depth. We can look at everybody else’s ideas and put them together for a Green Team news post. Thank your Mum too. ?
Thank you for this information Miss Knowler. I am going to sign up for the challenge. I must admit that over the last few weeks I have used more plastic than I used to so I’m now going to go back to my old ways and reduce the plastic I use. I’ve been so sad to see all the plastic people are leaving on beaches and in the parks during this hot weather. Hopefully this challenge is a good way of drawing attention to this problem.
Thank you Miss C. I have also been very upset seeing the waste left on our beaches and in our parks in recent days. Thank you for signing up. The more people that do, the better?