As it may have already been brought to your attention, our planet is dying from plastic pollution.

Plastic pollution is a man made problem but it’s affecting almost everything living. 12 million tonnes of various plastic debris are thrown into the ocean every year resulting in as many as 700 species of marine animals going extinct in the near future.  In June 2018, a beached pilot whale was found with more than 80 plastic bags inside its body.

The main problem is plastic will never decompose as it is a non-biodegradable material. Instead of decomposing, plastic turns into small pellets also known as microfibres  which fish can ingest and if we them proceed to eat those fish we would then have plastic in our system.

Millions of bottles are bought world wide every minute and only 9% are recycled;  the worst part is the majority of the recycled plastics made into clothing like vests which, when washed, release over 700,000 microfibres which, again, lead to fish eating them.

Although it may seem impossible to even try reduce your plastic use, since the 5p charge was emplaced 9 million less plastic bags ended up in the ocean.  In addition to buying a bag for life, there’s more you can do to help, such as: putting litter in the right bins and picking up all the plastic you can. It may only be a little but it still counts. Also, you could stop buying heavily packaged drinks, try not to get take away in plastic containers, see if you could use your own reusable container. Finally, don’t be afraid to challenge someone about littering- see if you can change their mind!

Now that’s what you can do to help but what can we do in school. Well in our school we’ve begun having meetings every Monday to discuss the problem. In those meeting we’ve realised that we need to replace the plastic straws and plastic cups and we’ve been doing regular litter picks around school.

We interviewed a few teachers from our school about the problem and this is what we found out…

Us: So how do you feel about pollution problems in the world?

Teacher: Devastated that humans have created this problem and we should all do our part to help.

Us: Do you believe we can put an end to plastic pollution?

Teacher: Yes but we need to get the word out there so bigger companies see the importance of it.

Us: Why do you think that people have just started to care?

Teacher: I think we have realised too late to the point where it is almost a rush to save our planet.

Us: Finally what are you doing to help?

Teacher: Both teachers said that they had started to recycle and one teacher’s class had even made an amazing recycled project (see images).

By Mary and Alexandra, Year 7