The plastic crisis and the next generation

Walking the sands of Sa-Tuna a picturesque coastal town in the Costa Brava, the sun starting to dip after its mid-day optimum. The water still and reflecting the shining source, the rays dancing over it illuminating its tranquillity but also something else. Green, blue, white, red, you name it, every colour of plastic mess displayed over the sands. This is a common occurrence in any beach no matter how remote. Every time I saw it the annoyance was matched by a level of hopelessness and the satisfaction after every beach clean I carried out was short lived by seeing the next plastic polluted site.

After pulling myself out of this negative thinking I got creative, what could I do to demonstrate this frustration in a positive way? My current job was teaching English In Spain this lead me to the somewhat obvious decision of leading my next session of classes around this topic, with some challenging English vocabulary being mastered in the classroom I got down to the point – change. This next generation is the future of tomorrow and they need to be more than just aware they need to be passionate about change, clearing up the mess of the generations before.

I started with some in class presentations. Their little Spanish faces contorted as photos of beautiful sea creatures were strangled and contaminated by plastic pieces. I wanted to do something creative with this shock and for them to be involved in the discussion. So we got about crafting a project using old plastic from their recycling to create ocean animals. Collecting the yoghurt pots from the week at the primary school we showed the children what it looked like for all those pots to be together accumulating to 5 black rubbish bags full! We then discussed the children’s recycling habits, with the end task of the children collecting their home family plastic recycling and bringing it into the classroom to craft an art piece!

The children were very excited by this concept, and started sharing ideas and stories of their personal experiences. The activism had started with one group of girls naming themselves the ‘plastic girls’ and creating an engaging song which they performed to their peers.

With bags full of plastic waste – milk bottles, yoghurt containers, chocolate wrappers, the lot! The children, in groups decided on an ocean animal to create. We had a real mixture of ocean animals that the children started to craft with their plastic waste. As the animals transformed into their beautiful art work the children had a real sense of pride. Not that they had just created a stunning project but they had also made something supposedly useless into art to be appreciated by all the school. Using this energy of transformation was the whole point of the class, to view waste differently, to understand it as part of the circular economy and to emphasise the importance of the damage caused to ocean life.

The ocean plastic display