Introduction
Plastic dependency (By Brian Yurasits on unsplash.com)
Two-thirds of plastic ended into the oceans come straight from land-based sources: litter being left on the beach or dropped in towns and cities, and litter carried by rivers. It is 10-20 million metric tons of plastics entering the oceans every year, damaging species and ecosystems. It comes from industry spills, landfill sites, sewage water, but also from individual irresponsible behaviour. Through the supply chain for goods production and distribution, or for service providing, all economic sectors contribute to the increase of this wave of plastic litter.
This activity proposes to engage learners in the change through a common challenge.
Learning Objectives
- The learner understands basic marine ecology, ecosystems, predator-prey relationships, etc.
- The learner understands threats to ocean systems such as pollution and overfishing and recognises and can explain the relative fragility of many ocean ecosystems including coral reefs and hypoxic dead zones.
- The learner is able to show people the impact humanity is having on the oceans (biomass loss, acidification, pollution, etc.) and the value of clean healthy oceans.
- The learner is able to research their country’s dependence on the sea.
- Anticipatory competency
- Normative competency
- Strategic competency
Instructions
Step 1) First session: About not using plastic - (60 minutes)
The trainer starts to run a dialogue about the impact of plastic waste on marine life and on humans. Can be mentioned: entanglement by floating plastic packaging of turtles, whales or dolphins, ingestion of floating plastic causing injuries or death of fishes and birds, endocrine disruption due to chemicals like PCBs, etc.
The trainer can show a short video on the issue. Eg. UN Environment Program “Preventing Our Oceans from Becoming Dumps” https://youtu.be/uCXEHrmEYpM or The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: https://vimeo.com/11704000
Or use one of the infographic proposed by https://www.seagoinggreen.org/infographics
Looking for the sources
Then, learners are asked, in groups of 3 or 4 persons, to build a mind-map of the origin of these plastic wastes. They present their findings to the other groups and compare their results.
Proposed infographics from the European Environmental Agency can be helpful.
See: European Environmental Agency https://www.eea.europa.eu/media/infographics/marine-litter-1/view or Clean Coasts https://cleancoasts.org/marine-litter/
Step 2) Home work: Let’s set a bet!
At the end of the first session, the trainer engaged learners to set a bet with their mates: for one month, participants will change behavior and habits to reduce the use of plastic in their daily life (use a cup for coffee, a bag to go shopping, limit plastic packaging, etc.). As evidence of their effort, they will provide one or two photos for each initiative.
To monitor the trainees’ involvement, the trainer may ask for a weekly uploading of the photos in an online drive storage.
Step 3) Second session: Power and advertise your everyday effort (60 minutes)
The class is then divided into groups (max. 5 persons per group) and each group selects the efforts made that they want to share and promote. Participants then invent a slogan to combine with the selected photos.
All selected efforts shortly explained by the slogan and illustrated will be shared through posts on a common facebook group (or other media user-friendly).
CALL FOR ACTION 1
Engage your peers!
Based on their production and publication online, learners may share this idea with other classes of the training center or with other training centers and ask them to join the initiative.
New challenges and accomplished bets will be published on the same online media. Roles and responsibilities will be shared among the learners for : Communication on the initiative / Definition of criteria for selection and publication / Management of the online channel for dissemination.
CALL FOR ACTION 2
Organize a picnic without plastic!!
Try to do it, this is a real challenge… You will be helped by some tips from Greenpeace (https://medium.com/greenpeace/how-to-create-a-plastic-free-picnic-570ab31cccbe), PlasticFree July (https://www.plasticfreejuly.org/get-involved/what-you-can-do/plastic-free-picnic/), Friends of the Earth (https://friendsoftheearth.uk/plastics/eco-parties-plastic-free-ideas), and if the weather and your agenda allow it, enjoy a real picnic plastic free all together!
Resources
Click each section below to see all resources available.
Resources
Click each section below to see all resources available.
Notes for Educators
Estimated Total Duration: 2 hours + homework + Call to Action
Step1: To start the process, and as an example, the trainer can ask learners to calculate their personal plastic consumption and realise the amount of plastic used in our daily life.
See on https://www.earthday.org/plastic-pollution-calculator-2/
Step1: As reminder, the main sources of marine litter are the following:
- Land-based
- land-fills and littering of beaches and coastal areas (tourism)
- rivers and floodwaters
- industrial emissions
- discharge from storm water drains
- untreated municipal sewerage
- Sea-based
- fishing and aquaculture
- illegal or accidental dumping at sea from shipping (e.g. transport, tourism)
- offshore mining and extraction
Some additional information on the interesting documents:
“Plastic, plastic everywhere” (Oceancare) https://www.oceancare.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Plastic-plastic-everywhere.pdf
“Identifying Sources of Marine Litter” JRC Science Hub, European Union, 2016 http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC104038/lb-na-28309-en-n.pdf