Students Respond to Single Use Plastics

 

            “What if we just stopped making plastic products and use what we have?”  An interesting observation from a seventh-grade student.

            During a meeting with a group of seventh-grade students, I showed the class the Amanda Gorman video on YouTube called “Earthrise”. In it, she spoke of the importance of saving our Earth. “What can we do?” she asks in the video. I asked the class what we could do as a society to reduce single plastic use. Some answers included putting all the plastic in a rocket ship and rocketing it to space or into the sun, throwing all the plastic trash into a volcano, use paper bags instead of plastic, purchasing items only made from recycled plastic, and “what if we just stopped making plastic and use what we have”. What if we did that? Is it really that simple?

            The communication standpoint theory, it states that standpoint is a place from which people view their world. The majority of the people will have a mutual standpoint. So, if all of us, in society, deciding to just stop buying more single use plastics and used what was already made, would the problem go away?  I am sure there are hundreds of thousands of plastic bottles and bags already made, sitting in a warehouse somewhere. What if we used all of that up and recycled it? What if we all said no to a single use plastic bags and carried cloth ones instead?

Amanda Gorman said in her video “All of us are change makers”. Will society change? Does everyone care enough about the marine life that is being affected? Do they care about ten million tons of plastic dumped in oceans every year? Does the fact that humans will ingest over forty pounds of plastic in their lifetime concern anyone? That is a startling statistic in my opinion.

            I asked the students if they or their families recycled. Some replied it was too inconvenient, their neighborhood did not participate, or the rest of the family was not willing to have two receptacles, one for trash and one for recycling. Others felt it was to expensive to use items that were not single use plastics. Plastic bags are free and easy to use if you buy something at the store, cloth bags are a hassle and you have to pay for them.

The students suggested using metal straws instead of plastic. I have some metal straws, but I am guilty of always forgetting to use them. But I wonder, if I start to use my metal straw more, will my friends see and begin to use them also? And then does that start a chain reaction of people observing people using metal straws and so more and more people use them? 

If everyone had a mutual standpoint, stop accepting plastic bags, use an alternative to a plastic straw, and use a reusable water bottle, would we change as a society? I hope these changes can be made. As Amanda Gorman said in the video, “prepare you to dare you” and “we do this not because it is nice but because it is necessary”. It is necessary to reduce the use of single use plastics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

“Another Side Effect of COVID-19: The Surge in Plastic Pollution.” Earth.org, 10 Feb. 2021, www. https://earth.org/covid-19-surge-in-plastic-pollution/.

Bomey, Nathan. “Plastic Bags, Forks and Containers Are Everywhere During the Pandemic, Increasing Pollution.” USA Today, 02 Feb. 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/12/11/plastic-bags-containers-forks-takeout-pandemic-single-use-plastics/3865064001/.

Caron, Christina. “Giant Trap Is Deployed to Catch Plastic Littering the Pacific Ocean.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 Mar. 2021 www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/science/ocean-cleanup-great-pacific-garbage-patch.html.

“Fact Sheet: Single Use Plastics.” Earth Day Network, 10 Apr. 2018, www.earthday.org/2018/03/29/fact-sheet-single-use-plastics/.

Levine, Alexandra. “New York Today: The Scourge of Plastic Straws.” The New York Times, 14 Mar. 2021.

Meyer, Zlati. “Plastic Straws Banned from Many Colleges, Museums.” USA Today, 24 Mar. 2021, pp. 01b–01b.

“The Be Straw Free Campaign.” National Park Services, 21 Mar. 2021, https://www.nps.gov/articles/straw-free.htm.

“The Facts.” Plastic Oceans, 03 Mar. 2021, www.plasticoceans.org/the-facts/.