Vision

VISION: Fredericton is a picturesque urban city on Wolastoqey land home to the Wolastoq (Saint John) river with a vibrant society. But unfortunately, we noticed that our river is being constantly polluted with trash and one of them is Styrofoam. Our vision for Fredericton and Canada as a whole is, to effectively reduce the amount of Styrofoam in circulation or at least, to encourage proper disposal of Styrofoam.

Action

We decided to inform our classmates about the harsh effects of Styrofoam and believe it or not, Styrofoam is worse than plastic regarding the environment. The gases released during the production of Styrofoam itself is a health hazard not to mention the harsh effects it has on the atmosphere and the environment and also, marine life and animal health.
We made a poster showing facts about Styrofoam, created a survey using a QR code to test people’s knowledge about Styrofoam. We interviewed our classmates about Styrofoam too.

Also, we reached out to RecycleNB and got some advice from the CEO on what to do with Styrofoam rather than tossing it in the trash. The interviewee said that recycling Styrofoam is a challenging process but, Styrofoam is still being made. This said, most Styrofoam ends up in landfills and the rest end up in the ocean.

We also did a cleanup by the river and found a lot of Styrofoam by the bank so imagine how much got in the river. We ended up with two bags of trash consisting of mostly Styrofoam and other single-use plastics. We also did a presentation to Grade 7 students, informing them about Styrofoam and played a game with them about Styrofoam.

Reflection & Celebration

We learned so much about styrofoam through this project. It was a valuable experience to be able to interview the CEO from Recycle NB. It has made us aware that we need to take action and make sure that we spread the word as well as commit to making sure we help to keep our planet healthy.
We will have a Film Festival at our school between May 28th- May 30th in which classes from grades six through eight can sign up and bring a class to watch our Water Docs videos that we created. We will have a few students who were involved in Water Docs there to facilitate the showing of the videos. We will have a feedback form for them to fill out afterwards and there will be time for our student leaders to answer any questions from the classes.