Recycle Week - KS1

Cal: Aaaahhhhhh!

Cal: Hey Bunny. Isn’t this nice?

Bunny: Erm yeah great. Love this look for me.

Cal: Oh sorry Bunny! Let me tidy that up.

Cal: Oh no!

Bunny: Well that’s great for me, but what about all the other animals in the park? They won’t like that.

Cal: Quick let’s pick it up!

Cal: Sorry snail!

Bunny: Let me get this out of your way.

Cal: Sorry we made a mess of your home.

Cal: That went everywhere! I didn’t realise things we do can hurt the environment.

Bunny: Don’t worry Cal. We can make choices that help the environment. We chose to pick up all our litter. And we chose to use our reusable water bottles. This meant we had less litter which helps look after the environment too.

Cal: Just like how I look after you?

Bunny: You mean like how I look after you!

Bunny: Look, we can use these recycling bins. Plastic, cardboard and metal.

Cal: Great idea Bunny! Then all our rubbish can be used again and made into something else.

Bunny: Lots of other things can be recycled too, like glass and paper. Recycling helps us, the animals and the environment.

Cal: And now we’ve made the park nice for us and all the other animals too.

Narrator: Plastic is useful and we use it everyday.

It's found in games, clothes, drinks bottles, bags, computers, phones, food trays, signs, pipes, multicoloured plastic bananas… err what? Well yeah, the point is we use plastic A LOT!

Plastic can be made in to anything and it's super strong. But that also makes it really difficult to break down if it gets into the environment

Over time, a real banana will turn brown, rot and break down into the soil. A multicoloured plastic banana, like this, could take hundreds and hundreds of years to break down. And even then, it's still plastic just in smaller bits.

So what do we do with our plastic? Well, we can throw it in the bin and it gets collected by a lorry. But with so much plastic around, Some of it, unfortunately, ends up in the sea.

The sea creatures can confuse those colourful plastics with a tasty meal, or even get trapped in plastic waste. But plastic doesn't only end up in the ocean. Sometimes that waste plastic is burnt. Which pollutes our air and harms wildlife. Or we dump it somewhere and pretend it doesn't exist.

We need to make a change together. We can use less plastic to start with. I never should have bought this plastic banana.

The best thing we can do is reuse it.

A plastic drinking bottle makes a great… Plastic drinking bottle. Or we can use it for something else, like turning it into a planter for your garden. But if we can't reuse it, we can recycle it.

Recycling is taking waste and turning it into useful materials for something else.

We can send the waste plastic to recycling centres. Here it's sorted, shredded and used to make new things. This can be expensive and difficult, but it does mean some old plastic can become new bags, rugs, plant pots, dog collars even shoes.

We can help the planet because we're reusing what we already have. Use less plastic, make less waste and no more 400 year old bananas in the sea.

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.

Narrator

The things that we eat and the things that we buy

Are causing us problems and I'll tell you why.

They come in a box, a bag or a cup

That we throw in the bin for someone else to pick up.

Some we recycle and reuse, true enough

But what happens to all the rest of the stuff?

It goes in a hole in the ground out of sight.

But if we can’t see it, does that make it right?

The plastic they’re made from lasts for so long

To dump it and hide it seems very wrong.

What will they say in years from now?

When they dig up this rubbish, they’ll all wonder how

We managed to bury so much of our waste

From bottles and wrappers to tubes of toothpaste.

And that’s just the rubbish we put in the ground

Much of it lies in wait to be found

By birds and fish who think that the taste

Will be food to eat and not plastic waste.

But don’t be sad, for there is a solution

To the puzzling problem of plastic pollution.

Use less, of course, that helps a lot

But don’t forget the things that can rot.

There’s paper and cardboard that we can use

And biodegradable bags to choose.

For instead of lasting year after year

It only takes weeks until they disappear.

So next time you’re shopping, and given the choice

Make a difference, speak up, raise your voice!

Tell all those who will listen and the rest:

For the sake of the future, do what is best.

Reduce, reuse, recycle, oh yes!

Let’s try our hardest to use plastic less.