“Moving away from plastics: a road to build”
UNESCO Week of Education for Sustainable Development: 21, 22 and 23 of November 2018, in Minori and Tramonti, Amalfi Coast
The problem of Plastic
“Every minute, a garbage truck full of plastic is thrown into our oceans” (WEF), this plastic comes from different sources: rivers, marine related activities and pollution on the beaches. In the past years there have been several activities to raise awareness of the trash situation on the shore in different parts of the world. In the Amalfi Coast, the project ‘Make it Blue’ is held every year, where volunteers from all over Europe come to the beach town of Minori to clean the beach and engage the kids in environmental workshops.
Activities in the school of Minori and Tramonti
In relation to this project, and with collaboration with the Chilean team of ‘científicos de la basura’, ACARBIO in collaboration with Club per l’Unesco di Amalfi, will develop activities with students of local schools, to transform themselves into active citizen scientists to identify trash on the beach. This project involves the students into an investigation and collection of data, that will help to measure the amount of plastic and trash in the sand, allowing them to realize the condition of their beach. Alongside with the fieldwork, educational material will be presented in the classrooms, showing the effects of plastic in marine animals and sea life, and giving information on how to recycle properly. The material will be focused on SGDs: 11 “sustainable cities and communities”, 12 “responsible consumption and production”, 14 “life below water”
The activities will be developed on the 21 and 23 of november in the Istituto Comprensivo di Minori and on november 22 in Tramonti (SA), in collaboration with the teachers. Alongside the practical activities will be a survey on the impact of environmental education activities. The questionnaire will be part of Sustainable Development master student’s thesis, from Uppsala University in Sweden, which aims to know what school kids think about the trash present on the beach and its effect on marine life. It will be applied before and after the activity to possibly find a behavioural change regarding the trash abandonment. It is relevant to know what is the effect of these type of activities, and how lectures and practical work on sustainability can shape the education of kids. Education for Sustainable Development has become a current topic in most of the european countries’ agenda, and we hope this study can contribute giving a concrete example with the experience of the children of Minori and Tramonti.