Microplastics Study
When students realize the depths of our plastic problems, they want to help!
Microplastics Study
Where to Start: Our class started by doing a fall cleanup of the schoolyard. We analyzed our findings to see what kinds of garbage were on our yard, and put them into categories such as plastic, paper, aluminum, food, and garbage (items that cannot be recycled). We soon realized that a lot of what we found on the yard was recyclable, which led us to learn more about recycling and the processes behind it. Students were quite upset about what they soon learned about plastics, and they wanted to learn more.
Lesson 1: Microplastics
This is when I showed them a three part slide show series I made about microplastics - if you would like me to share the slideshows with you, please email me at millsg@rcdsb.on.ca and I can share them with you. In a nutshell, I showed them some excellent video clips from a variety of sources that I have listed here below to help you get started:
Kids Take Action Against Ocean Plastic Pollution: https://youtu.be/hKFV9IquMXA
The Life Cycle of a Plastic Bottle: https://youtu.be/_6xlNyWPpB8
The Story of Microbeads: https://youtu.be/uAiIGd_JqZc
Young Canadian Fights Microbeads in Canada: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=610239&jwsource=em
The Petition Against Microbeads Works! : https://youtu.be/OlIBXkbpP5Q
Beat The Microbead website link: https://www.beatthemicrobead.org/
Fionn Fierria and his microbead solution: https://youtu.be/akCjg2s7xrs
Floating Garbage eater: https://laughingsquid.com/floating-robot-that-eats-trash-from-rivers/
How the Interceptor works: https://youtu.be/bm1rH70wfJo
Lesson 2: Taking Action
After the students learned about microplastics and microbeads, they started investigating their own plastic use at home and what products may contain microbeads. They also decided to continue collecting garbage from the schoolyard and analyzed the trash to see what our main source of pollution was. They then made posters for the school to encourage students to not litter and the dangers of plastic pollution. Here are a few samples of their posters:
We got very passionate about collecting trash from the schoolyard and ended up using some of our funding from our 'Learning For a Sustainable Future' Action Project to purchase an outdoor garbage can for students to put schoolyard waste into.
