Vision

Team 17, an extra curricular group of grade 7 & 8 students from Ecole River Heights School, was very interested in microplastics and water. They wanted to learn more by finding out what were the sources of microplastics and what we can do to help.

Action

We started by educating ourselves about microplastics. We had two guest speakers come in to talk to us over the lunch hour; one talked about clothing shedding microplastics and the other one connected us to The International Institute for Sustainable Development and a project that they were currently doing through the Experimental Lakes Area on microplastics. They shared some videos with us showing how they were doing ice coring at the time, as it was winter. We also got to participate in a virtual forum with university students and professors. After we completed all of our research, the students wrote and filmed a video that was over 18 minutes long. The students then reached out to their previous elementary school teachers and asked if they could come and present to grade five and six students. In the end, the students traveled to six different elementary schools, met with 13 classes and over 300 students heard their message. This is in addition to the 440 students at our school that had the video shared with them during science classes. The students also shared the video through the school newsletter, potentially reaching over 400 more families. The video did not just focus on the doom and gloom of microplastics but also practical solutions that everyone can do to help reduce the use and continued creation of microplastics. We are also continuing to share parts of our video through our school instagram to keep educating our 1175 followers on the issues around microplastics.

Reflection & Celebration

The students were so excited to see that they could encourage a few easy changes to help reduce the amount of microplastics that people use every day.

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