Agents embark on Mission 2

Today was the second A Future Without Rubbish session with William Fletcher Primary School in Yarnton, Oxfordshire.

In the first session, Chris Preston from Defra had led students in the mantra “reduce, reuse and recycle” and they became agents of change.

Today, maybe because he had drilled the waste hierarchy into them so memorably, the new Agents of A Future without Rubbish (AFWR) remembered it well!

We began today’s session with a discussion of the student’s first mission, which had aimed our Agents at finding out how much waste the school produces. They found that the school produces 24 bins of waste every day!

A lot of the rubbish in these bins consisted of plastic waste. We discussed the impact this plastic has on the environment, with our agents noting that the plastic is especially problematic for marine animals and birds.

Our agents were quick to observe that plastic bags look like jellyfish, a turtle’s favourite dinner! It’s no wonder that the turtle gets full up on plastic, and loses its appetite.

And they could not imagine getting into bed with plastic bags, like the stork who owns this nest had to. Fly up to 10,000 km from Africa for this!

Then our agents came up with ideas on how they could help reduce the plastic waste they produced, such as using reusable water bottles and reusable shopping bags. They also focused on the importance of recycling the plastic used, which lead us to our agents’ next mission!

Our agents were given “AFWR Mission 2” to do over half term and it will be reported here - the winner of this competition will be awarded their very own 500FootprintFlask, as seen in schools in Westminster.

#AFuturewithoutRubbish#AFWR #environment @DefraGovUK @pow_rebecca