Children can lead a sea change in marine pollution crisis

An international expert in marine debris says that school children will be a driving force in bringing about a sea change in attitude towards marine pollution, which has reached crisis proportions across the globe in the past decade.

Plymouth University professor, Richard Thompson, who is working on UN and EU projects to find solutions to ocean debris, believes children have a major role to play by educating their parents, who were brought up in a 'throwaway' generation. He is carrying out a survey of over 300 children who are taking part in the Ecover Schools Blue Mile at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth on 17-19 June.

Plastics account for a staggering 75% of all rubbish found in our seas – and some of it ends up killing wildlife. A recent report by Prof Thompson found that 663 species have to date been affected by marine debris – 80% of which was plastics. Many of the creatures had suffered entanglement or ingestion and among the most badly hit were turtles, seals and whales.

“Within the first 10 years of this century we’ve put into the environment more plastic than we had done in the whole of the century that went before. So there is a need for urgent action. And then we see the potential for harm, which is substantial. Some of the species which are affected by marine plastics are already threatened or endangered and they are being further compromised by their encounters with marine debris.

“One of the root causes of the problem is that our generation has been brought up to be a disposable society. This culture only emerged in the last 50 years. Children are fundamental in changing this because they are still forming their opinions, whereas most adults are guided by the past.

“So it’s absolutely not too late to stop this wasteful mind-set. That’s one of the really positive things about this story of plastic litter in the ocean. In theory, we should be able to virtually eliminate marine debris. And kids are really important in leading change in this area.”

Prof Thompson and colleagues Dr Bonny Hartley and Dr Sabine Pohl from the university’s School of Psychology, are carrying out a survey of schoolchildren as part of the Ecover Schools Blue Mile, an event which aims to teach children about the marine environment. The survey will indicate how the children's attitudes change after spending a day learning about the sea and the effect of plastics on oceans and wildlife.

Some 300 children from local schools will visit Plymouth University’s ‘Plastics Lab’ at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth during the three-day event: “We are quite keen to get children’s perceptions before and after the event to see if some of the things they’ve seen and learnt have changed their attitudes. To gather paired data of such a big sample would make quite a powerful analysis.”

At the same time, Prof Thompson is working on a survey of 16 EU countries, which aims to discover what adults think about the issue: “Possibly we could compare the difference in perceptions between the children and adults,” he said.

Prof Thompson – who worked with actor Jeremy Irons in a documentary about marine debris, Trashed – believes that youngsters can also influence their parents when it comes to making consumer choices.

He is advocating a ‘green, amber and red’ label system on the packaging of goods so that people can make an informed choice when shopping: “You’d have a green dot for ‘uses recycled material, can be recycled and uses the minimum amount of material’, a red dot for ‘doesn’t use recycled content, difficult to recycle and uses more material than it needs to’ and an amber dot would be somewhere in the middle.

“It’s about giving people choice so they can vote with their feet. I’m not saying everyone would take note of it but I think it would send a very clear message and it would be a wake-up call to industry because companies would think ‘I don’t want a red dot on my product – what can we do to solve this problem’.

“We’ll be trying this out with the children at the Ecover Schools Blue Mile. We’ll create a ‘shop’ to see if they can make an informed decision on what they’re buying. We’ll give them a shopping list and the ‘till’ counts up the environmental footprint rather than the price. The children can go back and shop as often as they like to get their score down.”

Prof Thompson believes that ultimately, change will happen – but not just because of wildlife issues: “To me, there is a clear need to act but if the wildlife on its own isn’t enough, then perhaps the knowledge that we are literally throwing away our oil and gas reserves might be.

“About 8% of world oil production is going towards making plastics every year and a third of that is going into the disposables – the single use items. Now we simply don’t have enough non-renewable reserves of oil and gas to be doing that. It’s a waste of oil.

“At the moment we’ve got a linear chain: from oil, through stuff that we don’t use for very long, into rubbish. So if we could recycle more, at least we would be getting more usage out of the oil.

“I have a belief that possibly, as the price of oil goes up over time and we realise that those resources are finite, then that might end up being a stronger driver than all of the images of strangled marine life. Those images are important in alerting the public view, but regrettably it may well be the use of non-renewable resources that actually brings more pressure to bear. We’ll have to wait to see.”

* As part of the EU study into marine debris, schools across the UK and 13 other EU coastal nations are being invited to take part in a short movie contest, ‘Catch Marine Litter on Film’. Children aged 7-18 can take part in the contest by filming marine rubbish and then saying why people should care and offering potential solutions. The two-minute films can be submitted between 9 September and 14 March.

www.thebluemile.org
http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/
http://www.marlisco.eu/video-contest.en.html