Have you ever noticed how much plastic you are using? If you haven’t, you should try our challenge! Our challenge is called, carry around your plastic waste for one week. In our challenge you carry around all of your own plastic for one week. This means that, you need to get a reusable bag and put all of your own plastic inside (even those 2L milk bottles) and carry it around for 1 week.
You may be wondering “Why?” We are doing this because we want people to realize how much plastic they are using everyday - especially the harmful single use plastic. Did you know an average Canadian uses 4.6 pounds of plastic each day! All of this plastic is going to the landfill or the ocean. If you’re still not convinced that you are using a lot of unnecessary plastic, this challenge is for you — we’re sure you will be shocked and motivated to make some change by the end of week one. Don’t be a statistic - challenge yourself to minimize any unnecessary waste. Help Hint - if you don’t want to carry it around, you can repurpose it. Your milk jug can double as a watering can; your yogurt container can become a flower pot! Reduce or re-purpose the plastic you are using everyday or wear it!
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Plastic Free Month Plastic is commonly used once, then thrown out. It is often not recycled properly at all. Our group’s challenge is to not use any single use plastic for a month. We believe that by getting in the habit of not using or buying any single use plastic, our future generations will live in a better and cleaner world. When we throw out plastic, some of it ends up in our oceans and landfills. Around 100 million marine animals die each year due to plastic. Some examples of single use plastics are plastic grocery bags, disposable water cups and plastic packaging. These plastic products can take up to 1000 years to decompose. Being plastic free for a month means not buying, using, or throwing out any single use plastic for an entire month. By not buying or using any plastics, we are helping our community become cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable. Some alternatives for single use plastic are: reusable water bottles, containers and cloth bags. By using alternatives for single use plastic, we are reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in our oceans. If many people do this challenge, we are not only just benefiting humans, but we are also protecting our marine, land and plant life. Our group is trying to help our world become cleaner bit by bit by, starting with little acts. We hope to make a difference.
Here is some more inspiration from a Youtuber who tried something similar to this challenge: Repurposing Plastic What is the challenge? This month we are challenging citizens of North Vancouver to repurpose and use less of all of the hard and soft plastics that they use, particularly single-use plastic bottles. Here are some reasons why this can be more effective on the problem of plastic waste in our world. While we of course encourage everyone to recycle, it can still create a negative impact on the environment (though it is obviously more ideal then not recycling at all). We’re focusing on repurposing plastics because everyone has plastics that they don’t necessarily need at home, when they could turn it into almost anything you’d need and like? For the first two weeks of our challenge, we want North Vancouver to collect any hard plastics they use or already have. On the last two weeks of the month they are encouraged to design and re-create the plastic into something different, and hopefully useful. We’re asking you to use your creativity and make it into something useful or beneficial to you. Some examples include:
Why are we attempting this? Our world is absolutely littered with trillions of single-use plastic bottles, while we could be reusing and repurposing these (possibly) useful parts of which most people don’t give a second thought. We want to get everyone to repurpose their plastic bottles to help this problem. Plastic bottles do not decompose quickly in the least, which damages our environment. It pollutes the air, the ground, the water, and also the wildlife around us. Animals eat and get stuck in several types of plastic, and this eventually harms humans in the long term through the food chain. The fumes from plastic incineration is harmful and can be deadly to humans and animals alike. These are just a fraction of the problems about discarded plastic in our world. Getting a generous number of people to repurpose and reuse their plastic bottles would first, influence others to do the same, but would also have a significant impact on some of the crises that humans face today, while also being a fun and simple challenge for participants. Repurposing plastics helps this cause because plastics could still be used as a useful material in this way, without improperly discarding plastic or going through the hassle of a faraway recycling depot. The homemade device could be used again and again, and it wouldn’t need to be replaced and thrown away. This project would also be an enjoyable and challenging task, while also teaching our target audience (11 – 17 year olds) the problems of plastic in our society. It could also serve as a basis for a larger project, such as a challenge for the entire city. In sum, we want to do this project to help the problem of plastic waste through repurposing otherwise wasteful material in a way that would be fun, yet would spread awareness towards other people of how to change their wasteful lifestyle. Plastic takes over 500 years to decompose and it damages our food chain, environment, and pollute our home: Earth. To save us from plastic pollution, we are encouraging North Vancouverites to repurpose single-use plastics. You can repurpose it to almost anything you can imagine, and this is where you can get creative!
Looking for inspiration and ideas? Here are some ideas of how you can repurpose commonly used hard plastic products. 1.Supply Cups!Office buildings are one of the leading contributors to the rise of landfills. So, after guzzling down a Mountain Dew, don’t just toss out the bottle after you’re finished. Instead, make plastic bottle cups to house pens and pencils at the office, or craft supplies at home. Impress your coworkers and kids with your sustainable and affordable supply cups. 2. Turn a Milk Jug into a Scooper!Save your milk cartons after use. One of the easiest and most useful projects is to create a scooper from the empty carton. Whenever you need to melt ice on your steps, garden your plants or even clean up after your dog, just scoop and toss. 3.Make a Sprinkler!Simply poke holes in a 2-liter bottle and you’ve made it happen. You can also recycle ballpoint pens that no longer work for a more effective sprinkler. By repurposing, reusing, recycling and using these strategies, we can help create a cleaner and healthier North Vancouver for everyone, and we hope that North Vancouver citizens will look at plastic in a new perspective. The challenge for this month is to recycle all of the plastic you use. Hopefully, you will continue to recycle plastic you make in the future, even if this challenge has passed. Now, you might be thinking, what?! How do I even recycle all my plastics? Well, it is actually quite simple: your teacher will show you a brochure and video regarding how and why we all should recycle our plastic waste. After, you will go home and hopefully inform your parents or guardians of what you’re doing so you can start gathering the plastic waste you would normally throw away and recycle it instead. Surprisingly, very few people recycle their plastic waste even though most of it can be recycled at the places noted in the brochure and video. We chose recycling 100% because failure to recycle plastic is a massive worldwide problem today. With levels of plastic in the oceans rising, more and more marine life are eating particles of plastic. You may be thinking, But plastic in our oceans is because of littering, not a lack of recycling. The answer is both yes and no. Both littering and not recycling is contributing to the amount of plastic in our oceans. For example, when someone goes to the beach and throws away a plastic water bottle instead of recycling it, curious seagulls and other animals are able to sort through the garbage, grab the water bottle, and accidentally drop it in the ocean. After the plastic is in the ocean, fish eat small amounts of it and can get sick and even die. Sometimes, when these fish are caught and sold, the plastic inside them is then consumed by humans. Eating plastic is very bad for all animals, including humans, and in some cases can even cause cancer. Many people and animals are affected by plastic pollution every day. We as a society must do something about it! Here’s how you can help: We first need to ensure that there is no food residue left in the plastic containers because that makes it harder to recycle and it can confuse animals into eating it. Secondly, we need to ensure we’re recycling our soft plastic because they are being carelessly thrown away which is filling our landfills, and suffocating animals. Don’t get us wrong, we understand the importance of plastic; we’re consumers and it’s part of our lives too. We just want to ensure we reduce the tremendous amount of plastic we use and properly recycle them. You may not know this, but most of the plastic that gets thrown away is actually recyclable. However, not all of it goes in your curbside bins. To solve the problem, we propose two solutions: properly recycling and reducing your plastic waste. Examples of what does go in your blue bin are hard plastic containers, tin and steel containers, aluminum foil and aluminum containers, empty aerosol cans, paper cups, gable top and aseptic cartons, frozen dessert boxes, and spiral wound paper cans. Other plastics can be taken to recycling depots. We recommend all London Drugs locations, the N.S.T.S. (North Shore Transfer Station), and Waste Control Services. Examples of the plastics which can be taken there are overwrap, soft plastics, Styrofoam packaging, and more. We’ve now covered ½ of our solution, the recycling half. The other half is reducing. Not only should you recycle your plastic, but you should also reduce the amount of plastic you make. You can do that by bringing reusable bags when you go shopping for clothes or food. If you often forget your bags, you can simply keep a few in your car. You can also start by asking restaurants to not bring you a straw, but if you’re a committed straw user, you can buy and bring metal or paper straws. If you reduce your plastic waste, we guarantee it’ll be easier to properly recycle it too. We hope you are now more educated about how to properly reduce and recycle, and we hope you can join this movement with us.
Plastic Bottles As a group, we have decided that plastic water bottles are a horrific problem. Our challenge is to eliminate plastic water bottles for one month. Participates in this challenge will be encouraged to use reusable bottles versus single use bottles. Our purpose is to reduce the number of plastic bottles in the North Vancouver district, thus reducing demands on our local recycling depots. Each week, participates will be given a checklist that will monitor their progress and to ensure each participant is on the right track. Questions on the checklist will also monitor the participant’s awareness of plastic consumption. There will be a newsletter given to participates to notify and furthermore explain the challenge. These newsletters will include information about the challenge and how to take a part in this one-month challenge. Finally, there will be two videos that will explain about reusing and refusing. The other video will give participates a different way to better understand are monthly challenge. By the end of this monthly challenge, we would like the participants to have a greater understanding of how plastic water bottles have a huge negative impact on the world around us and how simple actions can make positive change. Why is this issue important? Plastic waste is an ongoing issue that has many negative impacts on the world. For instance, climate change, wildlife, economy, and our health are all affected by plastic consumption. In some parts of the world, the climate has drastically changed as a result of plastic abuse. An example of this is the toxic air in many developing countries where plastic is burned due to lack of recycling facilities. Wildlife is also majorly impacted by the abuse of plastic. Many harmless animals have been hugely affected by the overwhelming amount of plastic in the ocean. For example, sea turtles mistake plastic bags as jellyfish and are slowly dying from starvation. Whales, birds, and fish are also hugely affected. These animals are effected by ingesting micro plastic by thinking these items are food. Not only does the environment suffer, the economy also takes a huge hit. Plastic doesn’t magically disappear. Countries spend ridiculous amount of money on cleaning up and recycling these plastic bottles of which human’s dispose. With all of these plastic bottles going to recycling depots, the country is spending money on workers to be able to handle the volume of plastic being sent. A recent study showed that Canada is spending millions of dollars trying to correct the mistakes of people who are recycling incorrectly. Lastly, health is one of the major areas affected by plastic. Coming into contact with unclean or unsanitary plastic can have harmful effects on health. For example, plastic bottles that are left in the sun could put chemicals in everyday drinking water. A recent study found that major water bottle companies have trace amounts of micro plastics in their products. Not enough research has been done to show the long-term effects this may have on human health. So, if we don’t deal with it now, then when? Solution You don’t have to worry about the loads of plastic bottles that are thrown to the ocean and land each day, because you can help to prevent this situation. For this month’s challenge, we want to reduce the amount of plastic bottles that are harming our environment each day, by reusing and recycling. There are many easy actions that you can take in your community to reduce your consumption of plastic bottles. Such as:
To help you keep track of all the actions you have taken throughout this month, and also keep you on target, there is a score sheet that will help you record your behavior towards this project. On that score sheet, there are more ideas of actions that you may want to consider taking, and there a place for you to write down and keep track of some of the actions that you think are going to decrease the amount of our plastic waste. Each action you take has a set amount of points, and your goal is to get as many points as possible. We have also provided an informing notice for the parents and people at home, so they can be informed of this issue and what we are doing to help. This notice also challenges them to pack you a plastic-free lunch to help to have a plastic-free classroom. By the end of this month, we hope that you can see the difference between your behaviors towards plastic bottles in the beginning of the month verses the end, and continue to do these small eco-friendly actions in your daily life for a better environment.
Disposable Coffee Cups Stop. Think about all the times you have bought a drink at a coffee shop. Now ask yourself, where did all those disposables cups you used go? Whether abandoned on a park bench or left in a garbage bin on the edge of town, disposable cups are rarely properly recycled. Most end up in landfills, the ocean, or left forgotten on the ground. This can do devastating damage to the environment. For example, are you aware that over 14 billion plastic coffee cups are used in Canada alone every year? That’s two times the population of Earth. Even worse, most of them are not recycled, and instead end up in landfills, oceans, and forests, polluting our only home: Earth. Most disposable cups are made from plastic, which is terrible enough, and the plastic lids of these cups only add to the problem. The 'paper' cups are also often lined with plastic, which cannot be separated easily. This means that despite what you might believe, most paper cups are actually non-recyclable. Disposable cups are also terrible for our health and increases the chance of getting life-threatening diseases, like cancer, especially if you use plastic cups for hot drinks. This is because hot beverages slowly melt away the plastic, and some end up in your drink. If we don’t stop abusing plastics, a future drowning in them is no more just a distant possibility, but an ever-looming tomorrow. That is why for this month, we challenge you to stop using disposable cups when shopping at coffee shops. We define disposable cups as any type of single-use cup, plastic, paper, styrofoam, or otherwise. So, the next time you go to Starbucks, tell the barista to specifically not use a disposable cup. Instead, we have a few simple solutions for you: 1. Instead of disposable coffee cups, try to use a reusable container, like a coffee mug. Most coffee shops, including Starbucks, Tim Horton’s, and David’s Tea, all accept customers to bring and use their own reusable mug, and most stores actually give you a 10-cent discount if you do! Not only are you saving money when you use a reusable mug, but you’re also saving the planet, one less disposable cup at a time. 2. Stay for a while Nowadays, everyone is constantly in a hurry. However, shouldn’t we all just slow down and stay for a while sometimes? Most coffee shops, like Tim Horton’s, offer reusable mugs for customers that have their drinks ‘for here’. So next time, instead of hurriedly grabbing a cup of coffee, just try and stay at the store for a while. 3. Forgo Buying Drinks at Coffee Shops Let’s all be honest here for a moment; is that daily cup of venti, half sweet, non-fat, caramel macchiato with two pumps of vanilla actually necessary? The answer most of the time is no. So why go through the trouble of going to a coffee shop, buying a drink, and harming the environment when you can just make them at home, or better yet, refrain from drinking that daily cup of sugar altogether? We are aware that some people go to coffee shops for their regular cup of joe instead of extravagant drinks, but a much better solution is just to make coffee at home. Quality coffee grinders and coffee brewers are both available for under thirty dollars each, and they last for practically a lifetime. Even with the price of coffee beans and coffee filters added, making coffee at home is still cheaper compared to the $2 – $5 you need to spend at coffee shops. We sincerely hope this blog has been helpful and you are able to go through the next month disposable cup-free. We also encourage you to continue this challenge, even if a month has passed.
By now that you have completed several of our monthly challenges, here is some motivation to let your now how much you are helping out our environment in terms of ocean features. Do you remember the first time you went to a beach? The soft sand, the slimy seaweed that tickles your legs? Sadly, plastic is finding its way into the ocean and is building up in a massive amount. The ocean that we all love is turning into a dump and we need to stop it. Marine life is taking the hardest hit. Our trash is invading animal’s homes forcing them elsewhere, and often resulting into death. Unfortunately, the animal’s digestive system can’t handle the trash, and it will often kill them. The deaths and migrations of too many animals in a particular area can hurt the food chain. Trash has to go somewhere, and once our oceans are full our cities and homes will be next. There are a lot of possibilities to help stop the plastic problem like recycling. If we continue to be wasteful and use plastic and other non-biodegradable materials, the result will be horrific We need to help stop this problem, one step at a time. To improve our school, we want to focus on how to recycle our hot lunch waste. It is important for students to know that they are helping the environment when they recycle. Our goal is to make everyone puts their hot lunch waste to the right place, as too much garbage piles up in our landfills every year. To do this, we will be showing students where to put the garbage and why. We want to teach fellow students about how each one of us and make an impact of reduction and recycling. We are also introducing you to ways to use less products that are not eco-friendly. These tips can save a lot of garbage in the landfill. We made a powerpoint to show where to put the garbage after hot lunch. Our challenge to you is to make sure everything we use on hot lunch days gets put in possible. There are many reasons why we should eliminate plastic from our daily use. Every day, animals are getting harmed from plastic in British Columbia. It is like if you put a plastic bag over your head, you can’t breathe. Animals go through this because plastic gets caught on their bodies and no animal should have to go through this. It takes 1000 years for plastic to dissolve. Polystyrene is the foam used to make cups that we use to drink and eat hot lunch ends up in landfills. Another example is if a fish eats plastic, then we eat the fish and we ingest the plastic. Humans eat at the top of the trophic level which means they can eat concentrated amounts of this toxic material. Some of the plastic that goes toward the landfills and environment is the plastic from the hot lunch program. The average elementary school produces 4.5kg per Child, In conclusion, plastic and foam are not good for us or the environment, and we need to find a way to create better ways of packaging and eating hot lunch. We see hot lunch garbage all the time in Canyon Heights where it is not supposed to be. For example, overflowing piles of plastic sushi containers are found in the garbage bins of the school. Those clear plastic sushi containers, which are recyclable and can be reused, have being dumped into landfills and are damaging the environment instead.
In hot lunch days, a lot of garbage is made. In our school we have hot lunch every Wednesday and we have 450 people in our school. That is a lot of garbage we make from hot lunch to go in landfills. As a student in Canyon Heights, we should all start to do something about this situation. First, we should be taking this waste home. Once at home, we need to reuse or recycle.Every piece of recycled hot lunch waste can reduce the amount of garbage thrown in landfills. Aside from recycling, some hot lunch garbage are not accepted in most recycling programs, Such as chip and snack bags. There are also complicated rules as to what material in the item can and can’t be recycled for where. Some may not want to do all these research for a piece of plastic, luckily, we are here to teach you! Alternatively, reusing is an excellent way to repurpose plastic. For example, we can:
Encourage people around you to do the challenges. Your friends and family members might be from another place, it’s good to tell others to reduce the amount of plastic wasted in their life. In conclusion, we are encouraging students and parents in the canyon heights community to learn more about where hot lunch garbage can be put to help the environment. Every Wednesday, students worth of lunch waste ends up in the garbage. Hundreds of foam packages, plastic bags and wraps are ending up in landfills instead of being recycled into other useful materials. Hundreds and thousands of plastic waste that canyon heights consumes end up in landfills for up to 1000 years or it can even end up in oceans for an even longer time. When plastics end up in oceans, sea animals can ingest or get stuck in plastics which can cause them to get sick or even die! When you choose to throw away plastics instead of recycle, the plastic will remain under the ground for hundreds of years instead of being used to make other useful materials. If we don’t recycle plastic, that means more plastic will be produced and that is the last thing our earth needs! To solve this problem, we need to know why our school isn’t recycling. After checking our bins, we have found that a lot of students are not only throwing their hot lunch waste into our school bins, when they are told to bring it home, but students are throwing their garbage in the wrong bins. Which led us to question, why wasn’t our school recycling properly? After asking our classmates, we have come to the conclusion that our school does not know how to recycle our hot lunch waste properly. We do not know how to recycle our hot lunch waste correctly because we have never been taught, which is why our goal is to teach the students of Canyon Heights how to recycle properly. WHAT: This month’s challenge is not to use wrapping paper, gift bags, ribbons and bows during the month of December. Did you you know, with each Christmas season in Canada 540,000 tonnes of wrapping paper and gift bags are thrown out each year. Just think, that’s 540,000 tonnes of garbage being put into our landfills. Another way to look at it would be that it takes 17 trees to make one tonne of wrapping paper. We need to cut down millions of trees to supply this amount of paper. Ribbons and bows are just as harmful to the environment. They are also not recyclable, which means more garbage. Ribbons and bows are each made out of metals and different plastics, as well as wrapping paper and gift bags. It takes plastic 10 - 1000 years to fully decompose. That is almost 12 times the average lifespan of a Canadian. All of this plastic wrapping paper, gift bags, ribbons and bows are going to have an impact on future generations. From 2010 - 2025 the amount of plastic waste will increase by 20 times. WHY: Imagine 100,000 elephants. Cute right?! But imagine there are 100,000 elephants again. This time with the same shape and size, but instead covered in wrapping paper. In the year 2017, Global News reported about the quantity of wrapping paper Canadians sent to the dump. The answer was 100,000 tonnes. Yep! Us humans usually think that since it’s called wrapping paper, it’s recyclable. Unfortunately this is incorrect. This common product used to made of nothing bad. But today’s wrapping paper has many other components mixed in. It is often dyed, laminated, and/or contains glitter foil and plastics all of which is practically impossible to recycle. Great. Looks like we have another trip to the landfill. All too often these are the only options to dispose of the waste. This means that approximately 50,000 trees are used to make 8,250,000kg of wrapping paper used at Christmas (in the UK). Yet it’s funny, we only use it once, throw it out, then it’s gone (to the landfill). Most of us probably don’t even think about where it’s going. So all of these trees and overfilled landfills (especially at Christmas time) are just there and keep damaging our environment. All to have some dyed plastic to wrap our gifts. So instead of jamming your recycling bins with wrapping paper and ribbons, this month we challenge you to think it through and find solutions (don’t worry we are here to help). SOLUTIONS: Instead of using wrapping paper, why not try using pretty brown paper with a flower or a string tied around it (not ribbon though because that is not recyclable.) Also if you do use brown paper and write something on it like ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’, the paper that you use with that pen ink on it CAN be recycled. So why not just use cute brown paper and write a special message on it. Also if you can’t be bothered to wrap it, how about you put in it a little paper bag with a fresh flower or a card stuck to it. Because those gift bags with that shiny tint to them have a plastic layer on them, so if you do use a bag to put your gifts in, make sure it is only paper and that it can be recycled. Surely sweet brown paper with a meaningful message on it is way more personal and crafty then using every year wrapping paper with Santa on it! But one more thing that is normally not recyclable but now can be is sticky tape, you can go to our website to learn how to dispose soft plastic and this problematic material. So like I said before how about you tie a small string around it to close it together and for it not to become undone. But! If you want to get really creative how about you use Christmas coloured fabric to wrap your presents with and tie it all together with a string. Another idea is that you could get your kids/siblings/parents/etc to draw/write something on your brown paper just to make it a lot more personal and special. That’s if you want to get really crafty though. So this month we challenge you to try some of these innovative ideas, and are confident you will have the most sustainable and stylish tree yet. Let’s make this holiday season be filled with even more love by caring for the earth, animals and each other in the most sustainable way. Gum Challenge For an entire month, we challenge you to not eat any gum with rubber in it. You may be thinking, “Rubber?” Many are unaware, but most gums actually contain synthetic rubber, usually found in the ‘gum base’, which takes as long as any other plastic to decompose. You aren’t even chewing the gum for that long, so is the negative environmental impact worth it? Gum is the second most littered item in the world, behind cigarette butts, and it takes much longer to decompose. People often throw chewed gum on the ground, under tables, and under benches instead of the garbage bin, which is incredibly unhygienic. Sometimes, people end up accidentally touching or sitting on the gum. Then, those people go and touch other things, spreading germs and bacteria. What if that person who was chewing the gum was sick? That’s a whole other story. We chose this particular challenge because 80-90% of gum is not recycled correctly. This affects our planet in a negative way because of a non-biodegradable ingredient in the gum called gum base. Gum base contains a natural substance, rosin, which is produced by pine trees. But, it also contains butyl rubber, a man-made product that is incredibly harmful to the environment. This rubber is used by almost every gum company in the world. When gum was first discovered in the mid 1800’s, it was a originally simple form of tree sap. It wasn’t harmful to our environment because it was a natural plant based product. However, in the 1960’s, gum was produced with synthetic rubbers. Since then, our planet became contaminated with it and has continued to be polluted by gum for the past 60 years. In 2015, the money spent on gum combined comes to a total of $25.83 billion dollars! When people do not recycle their used gum properly, it accumulates and pollutes our home, Earth. Now, there are recycling initiatives created in cities around the world such as London, UK, where designated recycling bins are located throughout the city just for chewing gum. When gum is disposed of properly, it can be recycled into plastic containers and children’s toys to create a happier planet. When gum is just thrown into the regular trash can, however, it ends up in landfills, and slowly but surely it accumulates with all the other garbage that cannot be recycled, wrecking our environment. When gum is thrown on our streets and sidewalks, it creates even more problems which negatively affect our Earth, for all the gum stuck to the pavement has to be cleaned off by machines and toxic chemicals, which further pollutes our air and water. Another way gum is harmful to our environment is the air pollution that is produced by large paper manufacturing plants that make all the packaging and wrappers. It’s ironic that such a small consumer product can have such huge negative effects on our precious Earth! The next time you decide to purchase a pack of gum and/or choose to throw your piece of chewed gum on the street, remember how we are hurting our world in such a big way! Luckily, there are some solutions. 1. Gum Alternatives - Simply Gum - Chicza Chewing Gum - Train Gum - Glee Gum These are gums that don’t contain rubber. Instead of using rubber, these chewing gums just take out the rubber altogether, therefore you are allowed to chew these types of gums for this challenge. 2. If you are not able to buy any of those brands and have a constant craving for gum or want to chew, Mentos (not the gum), Gummies, and Tic-Tac’s will help the craving die down. If you are seeking freshness, try using these alternatives this month. I mostly chew gum for the flavour, and when the flavour goes away I quickly throw out the gum. So why not chew Mentos or other flavoured candy instead, since the flavor will last just as long? 3. If you chew gum to have nice breath, you can chew parsley instead. However it must be fresh parsley. Chewing parsley is both healthier and more natural. Mints will also work. 4. Lastly, you can always decide to not chew gum at all. - The streets will stay cleaner and you won’t get sticky shoes - There will be less non-biodegradable materials in our environment. We hope to have created awareness amongst gum chewers regarding the negative effects that gum has on our planet. We hope you will say no the next time someone offers you a piece of gum, even if it’s just during this month’s challenge. Next time you feel like having some gum, think before you chew.
Straws ChallangeOur challenge for the month is for everyone to avoid plastic straws. Most people might be thinking, what’s the point? it’s just a puny little straw, how bad can it be? Actually, you should rethink what you are doing now because an average of 500 million straws end up in the ocean in America alone per day. Thats 14 times the population of Canada! What’s more is many of those straws will end up entangling, polluting and eaten by marine life, destroying our oceans. So here’s how you can help:
Hawaii has already started using biodegradable straws, so why haven’t we? Reusable straws are just as easy. You can buy 24 reusable straws online for just $3. We need to start now!! Remember, no straws. This month’s challenge is to not use or buy any new single-use plastic bags for 30 days. Rather than focus on recycling your single-use bags, we want you to reduce your consumption by reusing them or switching to cloth bags. What we mean by new single use plastic bags is the plastic bags that have never been used before and are often tossed after one shopping trip or piled in the back of your cupboard. Learning to reuse resources is important for our future and more than reusing, we are focusing on the reducing. Now days, a lot of kids believe that reusing and recycling is the solution to problems with non-biodegradable plastic, but we don’t realize that reducing the amount of plastic we use is also critical. So, for this challenge we also ask you to reduce the use of new plastic bags to zero. At the end of the month, you can record your progress by writing it down on paper and share it with friends. Write down how you did the challenge, if you succeeded and why you did the challenge. We hope this challenge inspires you to think more about how the world is going to be in the future. Why are we doing this? Plastic pollution is a huge problem in the world and lots of people do what they can to reduce it but why are they doing this? Plastic takes up to 1000 years to decompose, which is a very long time. It can greatly damage our environment for taking so long. This is why we are trying to help this problem. Our group’s challenge ties back to plastic bags; the challenge is to not use or buy any new plastic bags for a whole month. Look around, plastic bags are everywhere! It’s taking over our everyday lives. It makes us unaware of the damage we have made to our world and the environment. But most importantly, we want to make a difference. To get this to work, we have to spread the word of this challenge and why we want to do it. One of the purposes of this challenge is to get people to notice what plastic bags do to the world. Worldwide, about two million plastic bags are used every minute. This is a shocking insight to our society. Over 44% of all seabirds have become invested or entangled in plastic, studies have shown that by 2050, it will become 99%! Plastic always finds its way into our environment and often goes through storm drains and ends up in waterways. Even though the government has found some ways to solve this issue. When a new rule had been sent to some grocery stores to charge people for a plastic bag, it made some people decide to bring their own bags for shopping instead of paying for one. Always remember that it doesn’t matter how much you helped, it only matters if you helped at all. Though humans are trying their best, plastic is still a big problem. It is overpowering us. Luckily, there is still something we can do to help us reduce plastic waste. How can I help/ solutions
11000 tiny pieces of plastic are found in seafood every year 31% from plastic bag pollution, often a result of human laziness. We want to reduce plastic pollution because plastic is taking over our world and if we don’t make an effort to change, plastic pollution will just keep growing until the natural environment will be covered in plastic. What can you do? Grocery shopping is one of the biggest uses of plastic bags. Next time you go grocery shopping, BRING REUSABLE BAGS! A lot of people have reusable bags but forget or choose not to bring them. If you forget, leave a note or put some in your car.Reusable bags are also more durable and stylish. If you ever had a plastic bag rip before, cloth bags are definitely a better option. They are also way more stylish and you can get them in different colours or patterns. Another way you can help is to use biodegradable bags. You might be wondering what that is? Biodegradable bags are an eco friendly alternative for plastic bags. They are 100% biodegradable, they are non toxic, and they keep food fresh and delicious. They are even as strong and durable as a garbage bag. You can get them in different sizes so no matter what size you need, you will have the opportunity to bag your stuff in an efficient and eco friendly way! Spreading awareness is a great way to let people know about this worldwide problem and how serious it is. The more people are aware of this, the more people take action and plastic bag pollution will slowly decrease. The solution to this problem is up to us to reduce the amount of plastic bags and overall plastic we use everyday. For a review, three ways you can help are: 1. Bring reusable bags, 2. Use biodegradable bags 3. Spread awareness. We hope you will help us stop future plastic bag pollution. The World-Changing Effects on Lands and Oceans The oceans and land is getting filled with harmful plastic every day,because of the actions we are taking; That’s why we, as a grade 7 community, have came up with 10 monthly challenges to make sure that our earth isn’t a giant landfill. The month monthly challenge is a year-round goal where every month we provide a challenge that the public of North Vancouver can complete. By completing these challenges, we hope to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in our landfills and oceans. Every month we will target a different plastic group or lifestyle choice to ensure we are able to take on the plastic epidemic from as many different areas by the end of the year as we can. These areas include focusing on either using re-purposing, recycling, or reducing for an entire month. By doing these challenges we hope to change our communities mindset from unproductive and wasteful to being more aware about our plastic usage. Our short term goal for these challenges is to change the daily actions and mindset of North Vancouver residents. Instead of taking on an impossible task of trying to remove plastic completely from the world, we have come up with many many small actions one can take in their daily routine that will change the environment for the better.
We hope that your participation in each challenge will inspire you to continue making more sustainable choices in the long term, after the monthly challenge ends. Not only will these modifications fit into your lifestyle, but it will also help the planet and saves the future generations from having overflowing plastic islands. We believe that it's important to not only take action, but to also know and think about these choices that we make everyday and who they will be effecting too. We hope to see and hear about people participating in our challenges. Remember, when we change our mindset, we can change the world too. Our long term and major goal is to decrease the amount of plastic as much as possible. We hope that by the time the next generation lives, they won't be using or seeing as much plastic as we do today. We are the future and whatever we don’t do now, will get harder to fix. So the question remains: If not now, when? Plastic has been affecting the oceans and land for a long time because plastic never truly decomposes, but instead just breaks down into smaller pieces. These smaller pieces then turn the oceans into a giant chemical soup which in turn impact the marine life.
But what about the plastics that don’t make it to the ocean? Do they affect the land animals? The answer is a definite yes. You may have seen a video where a dog or a raccoon is walking around with a plastic food container like a peanut butter jar stuck on their head. Some, including me, found it comical at first, but the result for many animals is no laughing matter. Food containers are generally made for tools like knives or spoons to be dipped into them, or to have their contents poured out. but they were certainly not designed to serve up tasty morsels to hungry animals. When an animal’s head is stuck, they may suffer from overheating, suffocation, dehydration, starvation, and eventual death from these elements. They also won’t be able to defend themselves if a threat were to occur. Wildlife may also accidently ingest plastic. Animals might mistake them for food, or they may consume it in the process of eating the food it contains. Plastic causes all kinds of problems in an animal including intestinal blockages. If you had ever tried walking around with a plastic container on your foot, then you’ll know that it’s both uncomfortable and difficult. But to animals, a piece of plastic stuck on their leg (for a mammal) or wing (for a bird) can result in them not being able to get away from predators and may even cause wounds. Ducks are also one of the animals suffering from plastic. Sometimes, plastic twines get stuck on their antlers. While that by itself may not seem important, bucks actually get killed by them. This is because bucks and other animals often spar with each other using their antlers, but it becomes deadly when the plastic litter prevent them from separating. Knowing the impact that plastic has on the animals around you, surely you would want to prevent things like this happening. And this is exactly why we created the plastic project. To reduce the amount of plastic wrongfully dumped into the land and oceans. By doing the monthly challenges you are doing a favour for our planet. what we think we will accomplish by each of our monthly challenges:Straws- It would make an impact to the environment because 500 million straws get thrown away in the ocean every day, so we shouldn’t be using straws at all. Did you know that White Spots in North Vancouver recently changed their policies and are encouraging straw less experiences? Plastic Bags- It would make an impact to the environment because 5.25 trillion plastic bags get thrown away in the ocean and 269,000 tons float on the surface. While four billion plastic microfibers per square kilometer litter the deep sea. Join the sustainability train and get some reusable bags today! Carrying Plastic Waste- It would make an impact to the environment because it will help us realize how much plastic we are using and tossing away every month. Much of which is unnecessary. Recycle Your Soft Plastic- It would make an impact to the environment because most of the stuff you use every day is made from soft plastic like: produce bags, toy wrappers and food wrapping. Reusable Coffee Cups- It would make an impact to the environment because we could remove the number of cups, lids and straws simply by bringing our own. Plastic Free Month- It would make an impact to the world because 2,205 pounds of plastic is thrown in the ocean every year, each of us adding to this. Plastic Utensils- It will make an impact to the world because plastic utensils can be reuse so you wouldn’t have to throw them away every time you use them. In our school alone, we use 66 forks every hot lunch day. Don’t eat/buy individually packaged food- it would make an impact to the world because all that plastic that goes to waste, goes to the ocean and a lot of sea animals die from that, so we shouldn’t buy individually packaged food. Repurposing Plastic- It would make an impact to the world because all that “old junk” you have you could make something new and make it the star of your house. You get to be creative and save some money win-win. Using Glass or Plastic Containers- It would make an impact to the world because it would reduce styrofoam and cardboard containers. Gum- It will make an impact to the environment because some gum is made out of rubber, which takes a long time to decompose. You don’t want to eat rubber anyhow do you? |