- To teach students how harmful plastic is for our environment.
- To teach them to ‘reduce’, ‘reuse’,’ recycle’ and ‘refuse’ waste.
- To teach them the alternatives available to replace plastic.
Plastic waste like waste disposable cups, bottles, waste plastic bags etc. (dry waste).
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Ask the students to collect dry plastic waste from their houses, neighbourhood and school. This would include used plastic bottles, disposable cups, used polythene bags, plastic straws, etc.
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Ask them to make a list of all the different types of waste and the number of each item.
Fill the table below:
S.No.
Plastic Waste
Quantity
1)
Bottles
15
2)
Straws
30
- Students will realise the amount of plastic waste we generate every day.
- Now ask the students to make useful things or articles of decoration out of the waste plastic. For eg:- Plastic bottles can be used to make flower pots. In this case the student can use wet waste like fruit and vegetable peels as compost for the plant.
- Once done the students should gift these articles to their family members and neighbours from whom they had collected the waste.
- Ensure that the material used for packaging these is biodegradable like waste newspaper.
- The students should become ‘ Say no to plastic ambassadors’ and tell the family members and neighbours to whom they gift these about the negative effects of plastic on the environment.
- Ask the students also to suggest alternatives to plastic. For eg;- people should carry their own cloth or jute bags to the market, instead of asking for polythene bags.
- Ask students to reflect on how much plastic do we use everyday? Students observe the large amount of plastic waste generated in our environment. This observation will have a greater impact on them rather than facts from their textbooks, since they see the waste plastic generated in their environment themselves.
- Ask them to think of innovative solutions to ‘reduce’, ‘reuse’, ‘recycle’ and ‘refuse’ plastic.
- Be careful to guide students to avoid wet plastic since that might lead to infections.
- The activity can alternatively also be done with E-waste. For eg:- students can make pen stands with waste CDs.
- The activity can also be done with waste paper. Students can recycle paper and make notebooks from recycled paper, (in case the school has a recycling machine). They can also make paper bags for shopping out of waste newspapers.
- Likewise many different kinds of waste materials can be used like fruit and vegetable peels, pencil shavings, waste matchboxes, etc.
Facts about Plastic Waste
- In the last 70 years, 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced in India.
- Of the 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic produced, 6.3 billion tonnes have been discarded.
- Every year, nearly 13 million tonnes of plastic waste are added to oceans. Given their durability plastics do not decompose.
- “ A plastic bottle takes between 450-1000 years to decompose.”
- Nearly 50% of plastics used are single use products such as bottles, plastic bags, packaging, straws, stirrers, spoons and forks. Around the world, 1 million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute. Every year we use up to 5 trillion disposable plastic bags.
- Plastic waste leads to destruction of ecosystems, threat to lives of cattle and also enter our food systems.
( Source: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com)
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