During the week of 11th to 17th of March the eco squads from Layton Primary and Stanley Primary schools completed a social action project with Blackpool FC Community Trust as part of the Premier League Primary Stars Protect the Planet project. The initiative linked in with The Big Plastic Count, a national programme to raise awareness of how much plastic we use, and how much of that is non-recyclable plastic.
The eco squads in the schools consisted of KS2 children who have taken part in a six-week programme designed to encourage youth led social action projects.
Over the six weeks the group learnt about different challenges the planet and environment are facing, looked at different ways to travel economically, air and plastic pollution, ways to make sustainable swaps, then they researched how the school could be more sustainable and created their own social action project to help improve the schools carbon footprint and become more environmentally sustainable.
The Big Plastic Count is the UK’s largest survey into household plastic waste. The children from both schools used different ways to encourage their classmates to participate in the Big Plastic Count. For example, they created posters for their classes and their homes to remind families to take part in the Big Plastic Count. By doing this they helped to generate a KS2 footprint to show how much plastic was used and thrown away in a week. Across both schools the pupils they recorded 11,688 pieces of plastic thrown away during that week.
With these results they wrote a letter to their local MP, using their knowledge from the protect the planet lessons, to express the damage plastic is doing to the world and what they hope to see in the future.
The team also identified different ways they could actively travel to school and ensuring each class have a recycling bin.
Protect the planet is a programme designed and delivered as part of the Premier League Primary Stars programme in partnership with #IWILL to help young people create change in their local communities through youth led social action.
