What can you do?

Activities
Be creativeActivity

Collect plastic bottles, caps, chip packets or bags and use them for craft projects.
See the pictures for some ideas to get you started. And use your imagination.
You could hold a competition to see who can think of the best way to reuse a bottle or bag.

Plastic Pollution School Resource Pack Page 24

EcoBrickActivity

Hands on
Make an EcoBrick wall
Some schools have made walls to surround gardens or water tanks.
Other schools have made bins to sort rubbish, or even whole EcoBrick classrooms!

Plastic Pollution School Resource Pack Page 25

Plarn (plastic yarn) Activity

www.plasticbagcrafts.com
Plarn is made by cutting plastic bags into strips and tying them together into one long strand. It can then
be used to crochet or knit things like reusable bags, purses, and anything else you can imagine. Check out
plasticbagcrafts.com for crochet patterns.

Instructions:
1. Lay bag flat and fold it in half lengthwise
2. Fold bag in half again
3. Cut folded bag into loops, discarding handles & bottom
4. Knot loops together to form a single strand
5. Roll the strand into a ball and crochet or knit as you would with yarn

Sort your rubbish Activity

Put bins in place in your school to sort and collect different types of rubbish for recycling.
You could transport the rubbish to collection points, or use it for your own projects around the
school like making ecoBrick walls or craft.

Clean up your local area Activity

Do a clean up of your playground, local area or beach. You can collect the rubbish then send us the data using
the form (included on page ??). Or organise a big clean up event with multiple schools or community groups.
Once you have collected the rubbish, you could do an activity to analyse what youve found, like the pie chart or
questions below. Or students could sort the rubbish into the Think Seven groups to look at what biggest groups are.

Plastic Pollution School Resource Pack Page 26

Bottle Broom Activity

(by A Rocha Brazil www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/recycle-your-plastic-bottles-broom-0)

What you need

20 2L bottles, broomstick, scissors, stylus, awl wire, hammer, nails

Instructions
1. Remove the label on the bottle
2. R
emove the bottom of the bottle, with the cutting stylus. The bottle will keep
strips approximately 0.5 cm
3. Make cuts in the bottle up to the more rounded part
4. Remove the neck with scissors
5. Make 18 pieces without neck and leave 1 with a bottleneck
6. Fitting parts with no neck, one by one over the part with neck. Are you ready base of the broom
7. Cut the top of another bottle and fit over the base of the broom you just prepared
8. Drill two holes and insert the wire through all layers of bottles
9. Pull the wire to the other side and twist the ends to fasten
10. Secure parts with the aid of two nails
11. Your broom is ready!

Plastic Pollution School Resource Pack Page 27

Make a compost Activity

Start a compost heap in your school or home.

Plastic Pollution School Resource Pack Page 28