Pupils at a school in India have joined the fight against plastic pollution with an ad campaign aligned with the goals of UN World Environment Day.
One of the ads that the students created.
At Ascend International School in Mumbai, India, elementary school students have been studying environmentalism.
Under the guidance of teacher Henry Emerson, one class learned about the power of marketing to raise awareness of important issues. Students aged eight to nine were tasked with designing their own ads — featured in the slideshow above — to encourage people to help reduce plastic waste.
The project coincided with the annual Versova Beach Clean, which has been called the biggest beach clean-up in the world. Below, one student shares her thoughts on plastic pollution after attending the beach clean-up.
We are publishing some of the ads that the students created as well as Meher Singh’s thoughts, to underscore our support for World Environment Day, which this year is being hosted by India and which has the theme, “Beating Plastic Pollution.”
By Meher Singh (Ascend International School)
Plastic, it’s everywhere.
We humans are responsible for it. We use plastic a lot — from packaging to bottling. We use it every morning. How? Let me explain.
Those tiny chunks in your soap or even cream are sometimes plastic from the packaging. Now when you wash off the product it either goes down the sink or in the shower drain. Eventually the plastic reaches the sea, and there you go, an animal ate it and you are now a murderer.
You want to prove yourself innocent. Well, then, you are going to have to keep this in mind: “Kill plastic before it kills you.”
Now you are probably wondering, “How do you kill plastic?” Well, you can start off by using cloth bags, buying reusable products, picking up free plastic and monitoring your plastic waste.
This is very important because we are killing animals and ruining our environment. And on top of that, we are not conserving the earth for our future generation.
So are you with me? Let us clean up our mess!
(For other News-Decoder stories on the environment, click here.)
THREE QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
- Why is plastic so prevalent?
- In what ways can plastic harm the environment?
- Do you use plastic that is unnecessary and which you could stop using easily?