Recycle Week - KS2

All that plastic and packaging you get with groceries and deliveries. All the cardboard from those takeaway pizzas. All those metal tins and cans. We create a lot of waste. But luckily we have ways of reusing those materials.

Hi, I’m Jude. Every time you throw something away, it ends up somewhere. That can have a bad impact on the environment. Lots of waste goes to landfill, where it just sits being… well, rubbish.

But at places like this recycling centre behind me, some waste can be turned back into raw materials and reused. That’s called recycling. Let’s investigate…

Either people paid by the government, or the public themselves, can bring waste here and it’s sorted in different areas, depending on what type of material it is.

Here they can recycle: garden waste, wood, bricks, carpets, cardboard, paper, various electrical items, types of metal like food tins and aluminium, and of course, plastic.

All that waste is then transferred inside, where it’s carefully sorted. It’s then taken to a recycling facility and put into recycling machines. They can turn the waste back into a material we can use.

Those are all materials that are recyclable, but many people feel not enough material is made to be re-used. So much plastic, like the bags at supermarkets, can only be used once and they take a thousand years to eventually break down into nothing. Until then they just sit around and harm the environment.

When people say ‘environment’, it describes not only the area just around us, but the world as a whole. It’s dangerous for animals if they swallow or get stuck in plastic, and plastic releases pollution into the water as it dissolves, and into the air if it’s burnt.

I’m back home now from the recycling centre. We have different bins at home to help sort between recyclable and non-recyclable materials. Your local council gives information to explain what those different materials are.

But with humans creating so much harmful waste, the public can’t tackle this crisis alone: we need our leaders to make laws so companies use recyclable material only.

The gas, oil and coal industries create plastic and all sorts of other things we need, like energy. But they have a negative impact on the environment.

Over time, the waste they create and chemicals they release heat up the planet, making our weather more unpredictable and more dangerous.

What can you do to reduce your impact on the environment?

Kayla: Hey hey people in the past! Just wanted to make this video to say thanks! Thanks for not using so much plastic. The world got a lot better when you didn't.

You guys used to love plastic, I mean love, love, love it! Plastic is super useful, but you used to put it in chewing gum, stickers and t-shirts that you'd only wear a couple of times! Oh! I've got to show you guys this t-shirt. Just a sec.

I found it! From the 2020s, still going strong. Oh and this one I swapped with a friend and I just mended this one the other day. And this all started when you guys changed to be more awesome. Moving away from single-use plastics, not going through polyester clothes like loo roll.

Anyway, plastics get everywhere after you've used them, and back in your time lots went in the oceans. People dropped it, flushed it, sank it, some people are pretty clumsy if I'm honest.

And then the waves and weather broke the plastic into little pieces, and little fish would eat the little plastic, and then we would eat the little fish and then a bit of that bottle we threw out would be in us.

Weird, but true. So yeah, thanks for using less single-use plastics and recycling the plastic you did use.

Strange to think people didn't used to recycle. Like you dug stuff out of the ground, sent it to a factory, squished it into the shape of a bottle, popped a label on it, popped water in it, drove it to a shop, bought it, drank it, two seconds later, binned it.

All that for one bottle.

Kayla's Mum: Oh! Hey past people. Dinners ready. You want water with your dinner?

Kayla: Yep! Out of a tap please!

Kayla's Mum: Umm… yeah. Where else?

Kayla: What was I saying?

Oh yeah, thanks for recycling and not just using plastics once. You've saved the world's oceans and the fishies and you've saved me from eating plastic right now.

ALL: Hi, Lindsey! We've been busy cleaning the beach and helping the seabirds. Come help us.

ALL: Save our seabirds!

I'm totally up for getting involved, but if I want to help the seabirds, I've got to take to the sea. All aboard!

North Berwick in Scotland is home to some amazing wildlife.Puffin, puffin! Right next to the boat and I'm off to a place where 150,000 seabirds live.

Bass Rock. It's so white, it looks like it's covered in snow, but those are actually all birds, which is mind-blowing.

The birds covering Bass Rock are called gannets and there is one person who's been taking care of these birds for nearly 20 years. Meet Maggie.

Maggie, I've got to say, this is spectacular. Why have the birds actually chosen to live here? What do they love so much about this environment?

They've been here for centuries. They like the sheer cliffs and also, they've got good fishing out here, off the North Sea. If you've got food and somewhere nice to live - perfect.

LINDSEY: Happy birds. Except they do face a few issues, don't they?

MAGGIE: They do indeed.

One of the worst things we see is entanglement - when they get caught in fishing line or something. If it gets caught round their bill, they can't feed. If it gets caught into their nest, their chick maybe gets entangled and, sadly, it will just die. So these are things we've got to really look out for.Litter, litter! That was a bit…

LINDSEY: Get it!

MAGGIE: I'm going to have to go and get it. Got it!

LINDSEY: She's got it.

There are no people living on Bass Rock, so all of the litter has been washed ashore by the sea. Oh, yeah, the rope. Hadn't even seen that. That's what they get caught in.

LINDSEY: There's rope here.

Oh, you don't notice how much there is, do you, until you actually start looking for it? In the last five minutes, I've pulled a plastic straw out of a gannet's nest, a sweetie wrapper and a piece of rope out of another one. When we don't bin it, this is where it ends up.

The work doesn't end there. Potentially harmful rubbish isn't just found in the nests, it can be found all over the island, which is shocking, considering humans don't live here.

Oh, my goodness. Crisp packet, crisp packet. Another wrapper here. Look how old that is. It's really disintegrating. So has that been here for years and years, then? Probably years, yes.

It's shocking how, in just this space since we walked up the stairs, we've filled a bucket with plastic rubbish. It's actually pretty upsetting to see this much on an island like this which is just home to over 150,000 birds.

MAGGIE: 150,000 birds, yes. And they're having to live amongst this rubbish that we put here.

Beach cleans are, in some areas, paying off, there's no question, and I think we see this very much here in North Berwick. It's made an immense difference and when you get high tide, any rubbish that's on the beach just gets swept back out. We're still getting high tides, but we're not seeing as much rubbish floating in the seas. See? Slowly, slowly, we are making a difference.

There is a point going out to your beach, there is a point picking up litter, there is a point putting stuff in the bin. As you can see, protecting our seabirds is a big job, but, thankfully, Maggie isn't working alone.

ALL: Yeah!

I'm heading back to shore to meet these eco-warriors who are hunting tiny plastics known as nurdles, which are really dangerous to our coastal wildlife. Billions of these nurdles are used each year to make nearly all our plastic products, but many end up washing up on our beaches. Ada, explain to me, because I've never seen one, what is a nurdle?

Well, all these little plastic bits in this jar are nurdles. Some of them can be, like, small beads.

Oh, I can see, and why are they really bad news for our beaches and our coasts?

Well, some of them can be toxic and if, say, like, a seabird ate one of them, then it could die from the toxin in it.

So they really are bad news for our coasts, aren't they?

The wildlife club are not just searching for these tiny balls of plastic, they're recording everything too. I think we've got six so far. And the problem with nurdles is that they are teeny tiny, aren't they? And you don't exactly know if they're a tiny bit of plastic or not. Giles, are those nurdles?

GILES: Yeah, they are.

LINDSEY: Right, let's mark them down. Two nurdles.

The data we're collecting is vital when it comes to monitoring the amount of plastic on our coast.

Why is it really important that we come and clean up our beaches? This is the only planet we have. There isn't another planet over there, like, floating there with no humans on it. You know what? If I've learnt anything from this trip, it's just that a tiny, tiny bit of plastic can have a devastating impact.

But, as these guys are showing you, they're getting out there, they're making a huge difference and you can do that too. Could even earn one of these.