Consequences
Very few actions are neutral. Most actions create impact or change that has to be dealt with.
21 January 2019
For the Grade 6 IMYC entry point on Consequences, we revisited a project done with last year’s cohort for Earth Day with its focus on plastic pollution, looking at the consequence of a proliferation and easy availability of single-use plastics in global consumer markets and systemic failures by governments and other organizations to effectively manage it once discarded.
Grade 6 students learned about the environmental consequences of plastic pollution, from maiming and suffocating marine life to making it from the bottom to the top of the food chain in our own food. Working on trays from the local markets, they collaged blue and green pieces of plastic waste in the shapes of the world's oceans and landmasses.
Last year’s Earth Day campaign gained a bit of traction on social media and thankfully spurred small changes by big global businesses. While coffee stirrers are still served with hot beverages at my local coffee shop, they are no longer stocked with condiments and napkins like they were at this time last year. I was delighted to see that a major fast food chain restaurant at an airport in Thailand does not automatically provide customers with plastic tops and straws for their drinks but encourages customers to ask if they need them. In gathering materials for this project, we were happy to find that accumulating single-use plastics was just a little bit harder and more time-consuming than it was last year.
