Plastic bottles - the inspiration for this blog
So, plastic bottles. Plastic straws, plastic bags, plastic plastic plastic. I signed up for an online course on Marine Litter recently (thanks @UNEP and #cleanseas). I wanted to learn more about the challenges facing our oceans which are increasingly being talked about in the mainstream media - for example, this article in the Guardian today - Plastic Inundates UK coasts - and highlighted by events such as the Marine Conservation Society Plastic Free June campaign (#plasticchallenge). But it was our recent holiday to the wonderful wilderness of Mongolia which led me to finally start writing this blog.
We are lucky. We live and work overseas - giving us an opportunity to explore new countries and new cultures. Our children are able to grow up in an environment where they can see the wonderful diversity of the planet and it's people. But they are also seeing and increasingly noticing the state of the environment which surrounds them. On their journey to school, they drive past mounds of plastic and other waste along the side of a small road. The small road also goes past a very poor community. The rubbish, including plastic, is burnt. The air quality is bad - we have a portable air quality monitor which we take with us to measure the quality at school. Kids living in that community breath in that air with all the health implications that this has for them as they grow - #sustainability.
On our recent holiday we went to the middle of nowhere in Mongolia. We drove across the middle of the country, where no roads exist. We went to lakes and temples. And everywhere we went - there were plastic bottles. Coke bottles, water bottles, sprite bottles, beer bottles (#CokeSummer). We started taking photos to document it and then picked them up and took them to bins where we could find them. Below is a small selection of those pictures.
The kids are going to post these on Facebook and encourage others to start taking photos of bottles they come across in nature to help raise awareness amongst their friends. It has also had them thinking - is plastic a good thing? what are the good things that plastic does? why are there plastic bottles in the middle of nowhere - is it because of laziness, lack of awareness, lack of waste disposal systems, lack of alternatives to plastic bottles? We're going to explore some of these issues in this blog - with help from the kids!
We are lucky. We live and work overseas - giving us an opportunity to explore new countries and new cultures. Our children are able to grow up in an environment where they can see the wonderful diversity of the planet and it's people. But they are also seeing and increasingly noticing the state of the environment which surrounds them. On their journey to school, they drive past mounds of plastic and other waste along the side of a small road. The small road also goes past a very poor community. The rubbish, including plastic, is burnt. The air quality is bad - we have a portable air quality monitor which we take with us to measure the quality at school. Kids living in that community breath in that air with all the health implications that this has for them as they grow - #sustainability.
On our recent holiday we went to the middle of nowhere in Mongolia. We drove across the middle of the country, where no roads exist. We went to lakes and temples. And everywhere we went - there were plastic bottles. Coke bottles, water bottles, sprite bottles, beer bottles (#CokeSummer). We started taking photos to document it and then picked them up and took them to bins where we could find them. Below is a small selection of those pictures.
The kids are going to post these on Facebook and encourage others to start taking photos of bottles they come across in nature to help raise awareness amongst their friends. It has also had them thinking - is plastic a good thing? what are the good things that plastic does? why are there plastic bottles in the middle of nowhere - is it because of laziness, lack of awareness, lack of waste disposal systems, lack of alternatives to plastic bottles? We're going to explore some of these issues in this blog - with help from the kids!
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| Our friend Sonia in the sand dunes pointing out the bottle label |
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| #CokeSummer |
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