Ellen MacArthur and her solo voyage around the world

 Linked to our unit on ocean plastics and consumption.

Description:

What do you learn when you sail around the world on your own? 

When solo sailor Ellen MacArthur circled the globe – carrying everything she needed with her – she came back with new insight into the way the world works, as a place of interlocking cycles and finite resources, where the decisions we make today affect what's left for tomorrow. She proposes a bold new way to see the world's economic systems: not as linear, but as circular, where everything comes around.

How to solve the Plastic problem

 From BBC Ideas.

The Trash Isles

One of my holiday reads is Alastair Bonnett's 'The Age of Islands'. He mentions the Trash Islands campaign which tried to get them recognised as a country by the United Nations.

This was part of a campaign back in 2018 to raise awareness of the issue of ocean plastics and the accumulation in gyres.

Moby Duck lesson update...

Flip flop story...

We found three of these Speed flipflops from the @Maersk Shanghai cargo spill off the coast of North Carolina in March 2018 washed up within a few metres of each other in Cornwall, UK yesterday. A journey of some 3,500 miles in 655 days.
And still side by side. Amazing, really. pic.twitter.com/OpUdJXX29Z

— Lego Lost At Sea (@LegoLostAtSea) December 18, 2019

Ducks in the Oceans

Plastic in the Oceans

Ocean plastics...

Discuss

David Attenborough has betrayed the living world he loves | George Monbiot https://t.co/sqKcyjpy1V

— Guardian Environment (@guardianeco) November 7, 2018

Natalie Fee on Plastic Pollution

Worth a watch...

Reducing Plastic Use in school

We are doing some work in the area of reducing plastic waste in school, such as Single Use plastics in particular.
There has even been a plastic bag found 'at the bottom of' the Mariana Trench.

We used Boyan Slat's TEDx Talk from 2012, which is now turning into a project with funding and a pilot project about to launch in the Pacific.
We found out more about it doing some research, and exploring what he is planning.

The June issue of National Geographical is an essential tool for this work to. with an illustration by Jorge Gamboa, and some essential articles.

There is also a good article on Ocean Plastics in the latest Weapons of Reason.

Plastic in the Oceans

A useful film which has some errors in the animations if you want to be picky, but is designed for a school audience and tells its story engagingly...

Boyan Slat TedX talk on ocean plastic reduction

Showed this today to Year 8 to inspire their thinking....

Ducks...

In 1992, 7000 plastic ducks were lost at sea. They ended up all over the globe.#BluePlanet2 pic.twitter.com/2bp2C5za88

— BBC Earth (@BBCEarth) November 19, 2017

Back to using this activity again... Always a classic...

Ducks and gyres

Just came into my social media feeds... A simple video to go along with our lesson on plastic ducks as part of our Ocean plastics unit as part of the Geography of our Stuff...

Plasticide

Year 8, I hope that you saw this story in the news over the Easter break: Greenpeace placing a statue, which had been on display outside the National Theatre, outside the offices of Coca Cola, a company which produces billions of plastic bottles each year from plastic which has mostly never been recycled, and is then used just once.

The Life of a Plastic Bottle

One for Year 8 to watch...

Plastic microbeads

They are apparently going to be banned... We will explore these in Year 8.

Ocean Plastics story

A nice story from the very useful A View to Sea blog, which is written by Holly Griffin, a geography graduate.

It's about Ocean Sole: a company that makes sculptures from ocean plastics. They make a range of items

As a bizarre and yet very real phenomenon, thousands and thousands of flipflops are washed up onto the East African coast creating an environmental disaster. Not only spoiling the natural beauty of our beaches and oceans, the rubber soles are swallowed & suffocated on by fish & other animals, they obstruct turtle hatchlings from reaching the sea and are a man-made menace to our fragile ecosystems. 

Our creative team of artisans transforms the discarded flipflops into elephants, giraffes, lions, rhinos, dolphins, sharks, turtles and more. These colourful masterpieces come with an important message about marine conservation whilst bringing smiles to people all over the world.

World Oceans Day - 8th June

We have been exploring the issue of ocean plastics. This, along with acidification (which is killing the corals of the great barrier reef) and warming oceans are some of the major threats to our oceans, which we rely on for so much.
Here is the trailer for a forthcoming film on Ocean plastics and the threat to the oceans, and therefore to us. What can we do about this? Will a King's Ely geographer have the answer?

Ocean Plastics Map

A useful map for Year 8s to explore this month, as there is a focus on this as part of your exam. This is a new map showing ocean plastics.

The scale of ocean plastics is remarkable and worrying...

What are the sources of ocean plastics?
Where do they end up?
What damage do they do?
What can we do about them?

See the map here.