The Inspiring Kids Fighting for a Future Without Plastic

Children often show unparalleled enthusiasm to become ocean warriors in our fight against plastic pollution. They seem to love the excitement of heading out onto a windswept beach armed with litter pickers to hunt down troublesome trash and save Earth’s wildlife. However, if you want to encourage your child to get more involved, or if you simply want to inspire yourself to do more, we’ve got together a few examples of some awe-inspiring kids who are taking on the plastic challenge.

We’ll start with Louis-Matisse Nicholls, aka ‘the mini beach cleaner’. Growing up in Cornwall surrounded by the sea on three sides, he began picking up plastic at the age of two. Fast forward 10 years and he can still be found scouring some of Cornwall’s most wave-beaten beaches every day after school, with only Atlantic storms getting in his way. He says his motivation comes from wanting to save as many animals as possible and with many children sharing this dream, encouraging kids to pick up litter is a great way they can save a seal, dolphin or seabird’s life even at a young age. If only one piece of litter is collected, that could be the one piece that would have otherwise entangled a bird’s wings or been delivered to a baby seal as a fatal snack. Once back home, Louis makes sure the plastic isn’t wasted and sets about creating art pieces from his finds which are displayed on his Instagram page to help inspire other people to join him in his quest. With a museum’s worth of plastic art hanging from the walls of his home, it’s no wonder he has been awarded the Citizen of the Year award.

Two more plastic pioneers are sisters Ella and Caitlin aged 10 and 8. These siblings took to the streets and the internet to protest about the unnecessary, unwanted free plastic toys that were given away in some fast food restaurants. As it turns out, 500,000 other Britons also wanted these wasteful plastic pieces to be banished, filling up their petition in record time. The best news is that the fast food chains in question have already listened, with one having already discarded their free toy strategy while the other is looking at ways to make their free giveaways more sustainable. It seems our younger generation is a lot more persuasive and determined than our current one and with their future at stake, it’s clear why.

For kids reluctant to join the race to zero waste at home, schools can be a great place to rally enthusiasm as they get to tackle the challenge with all their friends. It seems almost every school today is doing something positive to tackle plastic but here is just one example that you can take inspiration from. An ambitious primary school in Dorset has practiced their English and art skills by writing letters to international food and drink companies and created protest signs to stop them selling items of single use plastic in less developed countries where they do not have adequate recycling or waste systems. In these regions, unwanted plastic remnants are left on streets or in rivers to be swept out to sea. Not only is it great to see children thinking big but it’s also amazing the awareness they have of the underlying causes of our plastic tide. Partly due to these students’ actions but also due to the messages of many others, certain large drink companies have now promised both recyclable packaging and to collect as much littered plastic as they sell in countries where the recycling infrastructure isn’t available.

For the slightly older kids in their teenage years, Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Programme runs a global contest each year which hopes to inspire and encourage action amongst our future generation of ocean leaders to help them build a better future for themselves and our environment. The contest asks teenagers to create solutions to plastic waste in their community and there have been some astonishing results from songs to art pieces, films to poetry readings. Just a quick internet search will deliver some of these incredible masterpieces. Some have tuned into their artistic side and illustrated videos full of heart-warming stories while others have created community events bursting with music, art, storytelling and even free shopping bags made from recycled t-shirts. Others painted a huge blue whale on a wooden board at their local beach front but its stomach was made from a large binbag. Their inventive idea saw local beachgoers collect beach plastic and place it into the whale’s stomach, seeing first hand how much plastic our beautiful wildlife can ingest if we don’t take action. Other teens noticed the amount of single use plastic their school handed out every day at lunchtime and created a giant sculpture from one day’s worth of waste to drive people’s signatures onto their petitions. While these are some fantastic examples, kids often have no end to their imagination and I’m sure in the coming years many of our innovative solutions will originate from their young minds.

Our last ocean heroes are 16 and 14 year old sisters who founded Kids Against Plastic. After learning about the UN’s global goals which aim for sustainable social and ecological development, they decided to step up and do their bit to reduce ocean pollution and encourage responsible consumption of materials. Their first and continuing main goal is to get unnecessary plastic water bottles off UK supermarket shelves and replaced with non-plastic alternatives. While they fight to achieve this goal, they have other great campaigns for you to get involved with which aim to get businesses, schools, councils, festivals and local clubs ‘plastic clever’. This involves banning the big four plastic polluters: bottles, bags, straws and cups. If you’re an individual or small family and want to get involved, the pair have a target to collect 100,000 pieces of litter from beaches, streets, forests, lakes and rivers, with each piece of plastic representing one of the marine mammals which is killed by plastic each year. With 28,000 more pieces of plastic rubbish needed to meet their target, this could be a great way to get your kids involved or even a chance for schools to spend an afternoon hosting a great big clean.

If you want to raise your child’s awareness of plastic, hopefully these examples have given you a few ideas of what can be done but there are small things you can try at home too. For example, you can show them how important it is to reuse items by transforming old unwanted items into art, musical instruments, new fashion statements of trash monsters. Even household chores can be made fun by getting young kids to separate waste and throw it into all the correct recycling bins and allow them to help you pick the best fruit and veg from bulk bins instead of the plastic wrapped alternatives. On rainy days you can encourage them to write stories about saving the ocean and on family outings you can take part in small litter cleans before you head back home. If all else fails, rallying together their friends to all do something together is a great way to make anything fun and exciting.

With children forming our future scientists, conservationists, ocean leaders and simple consumers, it is so important to inspire them to make a difference and protect nature from a young age to ensure our plastic blight stops at our generation, giving our ocean every chance at recovery.

By Neve McCracken-Heywood