Learn about the impacts of plastics, play a movement game to discover alternatives, and create a reusable bag tag.
The theme for Earth Day 2024 is "Planet vs Plastics". Students will discover how plastics can be harmful by participating in an interactive quiz, then play a movement game to look for reusable alternatives to plastic items and create a ‘bag’ tag to remind us to take our reusable bags shopping.
A single screen and laptop is used for watching the video and answering questions together as a class.
Before you begin, make sure:
Launch activity Commencer l'activité
Need help with using quiz activities in the classroom?
Check out
our
Getting started guide.
These Earth Day activities provide a link to the core competencies of the curriculum. The activities engage students in taking action on reducing plastics in our lives.
The activities also connect to a variety of grade-specific curricular competencies and content in a variety of subjects including Arts Education, Science and Social Studies.
Earth Day is held annually on April 22nd with the aim of driving a year of energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to create a new plan of action for our planet.
This year's theme is Planet vs Plastics: focusing on health risks to all, demanding change and innovative solutions to achieve a 60% reduction of plastic production by 2040.
Excerpt from Earthday.org
“The word environment means what surrounds you. In the case of plastics we have become the product itself – it flows through our blood stream, adheres to our internal organs, and carries with it heavy metals known to cause cancer and disease. Now this once-thought amazing and useful product has become something else, and our health and that of all other living creatures hangs in the balance,” said Kathleen Rogers, President of EARTHDAY.ORG. “The Planet vs. Plastics campaign is a call to arms, a demand that we act now to end the scourge of plastics and safeguard the health of every living being upon our planet.”
Plastics extend beyond an imminent environmental issue; they present a grave threat to human health as alarming as climate change. As plastics break down into microplastics, they release toxic chemicals into our food and water sources and circulate through the air we breathe. Plastic production now has grown to more than 380 million tons per year. More plastic has been produced in the last ten years than in the entire 20th century, and the industry plans to grow explosively for the indefinite future.
“All this plastic was produced by a petrochemical industry with an abysmal record of toxic emissions, spills, and explosions,” said Denis Hayes, Chair Emeritus of EARTHDAY.ORG. “Plastics are produced in polluting facilities that somehow seem to always be located in the poorest neighborhoods. Some plastics are lethal when combusted; other plastics transmit hormone-disrupting chemicals; and all plastics can starve birds and suffocate sea life. At every stage of their life cycles, from the oil well to the town dump, plastics are a dangerous blight.”
More than 500 billion plastic bags—one million bags per minute—were produced worldwide last year. Many plastic bags have a working life of a few minutes, followed by an afterlife of centuries. Even after plastics disintegrate, they remain as microplastics, minute particles permeating every niche of life on the planet.
100 billion plastic beverage containers were sold last year in the United States. That’s more than 300 bottles per inhabitant. A few of them will be converted into park benches; none of them will be made into new plastic bottles and 95% of all plastics in the US won’t be recycled at all. Even the 5% of plastics being recycled are “downcycling” to inferior products or shipped to poorer countries for “recycling”, leaving the demand for virgin plastic undiminished.
People seldom think of water when they think of plastics. But making a plastic water bottle requires six times as much water as the bottle itself contains.
EARTHDAY.ORG demands the International Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC) mandate the end of production of single-use plastic by 2030 in the Global Plastics Treaty. Moreover, it demands the treaty be implemented using the precautionary principle and the polluter pays doctrine.
Young people can act at school, in their community and at home to protect and care for the planet. We can empower them with a deeper understanding of our responsibility to take care of the planet we depend on, and the plants and animals that live here too.
Check out BC Hydro’s news story on microplastic pollution from laundry.
According to UBC's Decision Insights for Business & Society, the path to change isn't always around energy cost savings or carbon emission reductions. At least with Team Power Smart members, the messaging that most drives energy efficient laundry behaviours focuses on the link between laundry and the generation of microplastics affecting turtles and other sea life.
Did you know that a single load of laundry – when machine washed in hot water and machine dried with hot air – produces between 700,000 and 12 million microfibres that end up in our oceans? It's estimated that laundry is responsible for 35% of microplastics in oceans, and that there are relatively easy ways to reduce that number:
We want to ensure that we’re providing activities your class will enjoy. Please let us know what you think about this activity by leaving us your feedback.