K's grade 6 social studies this year is all about being a good global citizen and how to "Think Globally and Act Locally" and it just happened that on Saturday the Plastic Pollution Coalition aired a live broadcast all day of it’s TEDxGreatPacificGarbagePatch conference. We both watched on and off throughout the day and it was SO INSPIRING to hear about how people around the world are banding together to end plastic pollution and just as equally scary to see just where our plastic garbage is ending up.
So we decided that we would start a project that would take us through recycling everything we possibly could and doing a weekly weigh in to see just how much plastic, tin, bottles and so on that we actually use every week. Through this we will be able to track our consumption, work on using less and help us to make smarter purchasing choices to further reduce our plastic waste!!
Our goal is to chart our findings with bar graphs from now until the end of May which is when we usually wrap up our school year and get everyone involved and caring about what is happening in our trash and shopping baskets. My 4 year old has been keeping tabs on what we are putting in the trash to make sure we don't accidentally throw away something we can recycle *grin*. It's great!
I love what J.D. Russo said..
"We need to raise CARE, instead of AWARENESS".
Everyone knows that they need to recycle, reduce, reuse and so on but we need to get more people to really feel it and to care about why they should be doing these things. If you've got a minute you should check out his short talk below... He's 14 years old by the way :)