Plastic Soup Ocean - Ocean Gyre Preso for Elementary and Middle School - including solutions

Plastic Soup Ocean…

http://www.nbcnews.com/watch/nightly-news/large-garbage-patch-floating-in-the-pacific-ocean-318824003814

Ocean Trash – the story…

The Great Pacific Gyres

What do turtles eat?

1 Million seabirds and 100,000 other marine animals (including turtles, whales, and fish) are

killed every year as a result of plastic litter

Plastic takes hundreds of years to break down

Where does this trash come from?PEOPLE LITTERING !!!!!

Trash from the street goes into the drains…

Litter from the Street, into the Storm Drains, into the Ocean

Then goes out to the Bay

Trash then goes into the Ocean

Cigarette Butts are 20% of all litter

Styrofoam

Styrofoam is made of little tiny round balls that are compressed into Cups, Food Containers, and Coolers.

Styrofoam = Nasty when it gets into the water

When the bond deteriorates, the little tiny pieces float for hundreds

of years and are impossible to clean up. Marine life

thinks this very toxic material is food, and it enters our food chain. These pictures are all

Styrofoam.

What other types of single use plastics are littered?

You don’t have to be part of the

problem !!!

• When we throw something ‘away’, where does it go? What is ‘Away’?

• What kinds of disposable single-use plastics do we use every day?

It all starts with you and your decisions…

Reduce

Refuse

Recycle

Recover

Reuse

Lower the amount of waste created

Use things more than once

Do you really need that?

Using materials to make new products

Recover energy from waste

Landfill Safely dispose of waste to landfill

Know that you know all this

information, what will you do differently?

It’s not only personal decisions…

You can be a Change-Maker if you think

Man vs.

Trash

I collect about 75 pounds of trash every week !

Commonly found trash• Plastic shopping bags• Plastic water/soda bottles and lids• Cigarette butts (not biodegradable)• Cigarette pack plastic wrappers• Styrofoam Cups / food containers

• Plastic Straws• Plastic Food bags (potato • chips) and wrappers• Aluminum cans• Used fishing line

I asked the Miami Beach Government to BAN Styrofoam

AND THEY DID !!!!

I also started a website…

19-Year-old Boyan Slat invents solution to cleanup ocean garbage patches

Park School Students Lobby Dunkin' Donuts on Styrofoam

Styrofoam is bad for the environment, animals, and human health. 4th and 5th grade student formed the Kids Styrofoam Club and created an online petition asking Dunkin Donuts to eliminate Styrofoam cups

from their locations by Earth Day of 2015. The students delivered 250,000 signature to Dunkin

Donuts, who said they are working on different cups.

I am a Change-Maker

Park Elementary 5th Grade Students are Change-Makers

Are you a Change-Maker?