How young Plastic Champions took action on sustainability and plastic waste

At Kenmore Park Junior School in Harrow, UCL’s Dr Tessa Willy (Primary PGCE’s Deputy Programme Lead) has worked with the school’s Head of Year 5, Rebecca Razzaque, and pupils known as the ‘Eco-Champs’ Plastic Champions, on research for UCL’s Centre Climate Change and Sustainability Education. 

Together, they created professional development resources for Teaching for Sustainable Futures, a landmark programme of free professional development for teachers.

Rebecca and Tessa reflect on how the project developed:

A motivation to tackle plastic pollution

The Plastic Champions observed something in the local area that they did not like. Through finding out more, and supported by their teacher, they took the issue to the top in order to try to resolve it.  

Initially, pupils received an assembly by Greenpeace, who spoke about plastic pollution and the impact it was having on the world. Importantly, they also talked about solutions which seemed ‘do-able’, so Kenmore Park’s pupils decided to take action. The Plastic Champions took part in the ‘Big Plastic Count’, a national event, and from there their journey just grew, such as visiting the Houses of Parliament through having contacted their local MP. Alongside this work, they were reading ‘What a Waste’ (French, 2019), which is about sustainability and plastic waste, and that really triggered their interest. 

The project

The school held a ‘no plastic picnic’ for the Queen’s Jubilee, which was quite difficult because everything was surrounded in plastic! However, the children managed to provide a picnic with much less plastic than usual. They brought in fruit in paper bags and used wooden rather than plastic cutlery. It proved to be a real success.

What the Plastic Champions learnt

• “I’ve learned that plastic isn’t a sustainable material, and that we’re also breathing micro plastics in every second.”
• “When plastic breaks up, it gets smaller and smaller. It never goes away, so then it goes into the air, and we drink it as well, so it’s just coming into us all the time.”  
• “Learning about this has really helped me because now I don’t use that much plastic.”  
• “It’s helped at school because there are fewer plastic bottles and less single-use plastic. As soon as we started counting the number of plastic bottles, people didn’t bring in so many and so there was less plastic around. People know about it now.”  

The difference it has made to their family lives and local community  

• “One of the facts I told my parents is that there’s more plastic in the world than humans ever lived on Earth, which they didn’t believe at first, but now they do because they have looked into it and found out for themselves. Knowing that has made them think differently. They are definitely more aware and we don’t use as much plastic at home.”
• “When we go shopping, instead of using plastic bags, we’ve started to use cloth bags, which is more sustainable and it’s easier. Also, instead of using plastic bottles at home, we have started to use reusable bottles, so we don’t have to keep buying them. So, it’s also cheaper and it’s more efficient as well.”
• “Now we make sure we always recycle. Even though it’s only a few percent of plastic that gets recycled, we still try to do as much as we can.”

Images (top and centre): Courtesy of Greenpeace.