Kellett Tell It_Spring 2015

Fast Food Packaging

Tell It KELLETT PREPARATORY SCHOOL, MARCH 2015

The Green Issue

by Sophia Schwarzwalder Ever ybody gets a craving for fast food sometimes. But when you finish your mouthwatering burger, fries, and milkshake, did you ever think about what happens to the packaging your meal came in?

!

In December, I interviewed a woman named Gabriel who works at Friends of the Earth Hong Kong, a leading environmental organisation that focuses on protecting our local and regional environment, to try and get an answer to this question.

!

Fast food comes in lots of different kinds of packaging, like the red and yellow french fry boxes from McDonalds or the paper wrapper that holds a Whopper from Burger King. In Hong Kong, when you throw your used fast food packaging into the rubbish, most of it ends up piled up in a landfill. In fact, Gabriel told me that Hong Kong’s landfills are made up of 40% food waste, 20% plastic, and 20% paper. Fast food packaging is a big contributor.

!

Some kinds of packaging decompose faster than others. These are called compostable plastics or bio-plastics.

Bio-plastics are made from renewable materials like corn-starch or potato starch. They can decompose within a matter of months, but most plastics take hundreds of years to decompose.

!

A more environmentally friendly way would be to recycle our plastic and paper fast food containers, but this is not as easy as you may think.

Before a piece of packaging can be recycled, it has to be a) washed and cleaned, b) sorted, and c) placed in the correct bin.

Recycling in Hong Kong is not standard practice.

According to Gabriel, “plastic was the most recycled material in Hong Kong in 2010, but in the past two or three years, the plastic recycling rate dropped.”

!

!

So what can fast food restaurants in Hong Kong do to make their packaging more environmentally friendly?

!

One thing they could do is try to make sure as much of their packaging as possible gets recycled.

They could pay someone to clean, separate, and put all of the packaging in the proper recycling bin. They could also put signs in their restaurants that show people how to properly clean and recycle their take away packages. This would reduce the amount of fast food packaging that goes into landfill. Another thing they can do is use more bio-plastics in their packaging, so that the packaging that does go to landfills would be able to decompose more quickly.

!

These solutions might take more work and take away profits from fast food restaurants, but it’s worth it because we only have one environment and if we mistreat it, it will be gone forever. So next time you take a big bite out of a Big Mac, think about whether you can recycle the box it came in!

Take a look at what’s inside Leo Barnes’ questions answered.

How can we … be more green out and about?

Take a water bottle with you instead of buying a plastic one. Also, take a bag for your litter and empty it once you get home, into a recycling bin if possible. Say NO to disposable plastic packaging. Reuse and recycle.

!

Where can we … find out if there is a beach clean up event near me?

The Clean Shorelines website has a list of the beach clean up events in Hong Kong, organised by the months. DO go along and help. www.epd.gov.hk/epd/clean_shorlines/events.html How can we … be more careful when using electricity?

We can save electricity by turning off air conditioners when doors are open, and NOT setting air conditioners below 25 degrees. At least 16% of electricity is used by an air conditioner. This figure is much higher in the summer.

!

What can we … do to stop water pollution?

We can stop water pollution by NOT littering. The wind picks the rubbish up from the ground and lifts it to the sea. 80% of marine litter in Hong Kong waters is plastic. Mostly plastic bottles.

!

How can we … help to reduce air pollution?

Try to take the school bus instead of using private cars for school. If there is no school bus near you, consider sharing your car with a group of people. Also try to take public transport on weekends, NOT taxis.

!

How can we … reduce waste food at restaurants?

DON’T over order, think about how much you can really eat. If you do end up with too much food, ask for a takeaway carton and eat it later!

1

Fast Food Packaging

2

Top Tips from Leo

3 Recycling 4

Air Pollution

5

Marine Pollution

6

Beach Clean Up

7

En-trak

8

Light Pollution

9

Eco Club

10

Food Waste

11

Lamma Winds

12

Living Green

THANKS TO THE TEAM

Barnaby, Olivia, Sebastian, Sofia, Leo, Rupert, Gayatri, Neel, Ella, Tyler, John, Alex and Harry.

Thank you to Mr Dawes and Mrs Bull for all their help and use of the Learning Tech Room!

Thank you Jo and Nimmi for

our interviews, writing and editing.

Kellett Tell It

!

Spring Term Edition !

March 2015

Recycling

by Harry Nye

!!

your rubbish for you making it convenient. Then they take it to the recycling facilities. They give you bags to split your home waste up into the various materials too and provide information on their website about what is happening to it. Its a small local company but they are beginning to make recycling easy and convenient for everyone.

!

How many times have you recycled instead of throwing things away? What can you recycle?

If you recycle more than throwing things away you What do you do when a electric item breaks? would be a really helpful person to the How do you recycle? read this article to find out! environment and the world.

!

! !

You can recycle by getting a local recycling You cannot recycle these items so please think company to collect your recycling each week and before buying! you could be greener by not throwing recyclable items in your normal bin.

Aerosol cans: Sure, they're metal. But since spray cans also contain propellants and chemicals, most The items you can recycle at home are: municipal systems treat them as hazardous magazines and newspapers material. cardboard boxes Batteries: These are generally handled separately milk and yoghurt cartons from both regular trash and curb-side recycling detergent and washing up liquid bottles Diapers: It is not commercially feasible to reclaim sauce and jam bottles the paper and plastic in disposable diapers glass bottles Juice boxes and other coated cardboard drink plastic bottles and lots of other items containers: Some manufacturers have begun Recycling at Kellett school in HK is pretty good but producing recyclable containers. These will be specially marked. The rest are not suitable for reprocessing.

Napkins and paper towels: Discouraged because of what they may have absorbed. Consider composting.

Pizza boxes: Too much grease. While some compost enthusiasts steer clear of adding pizza box cardboard to their pile, others report no problems. It's that or the trash.

Plastic bags and plastic wrap: If possible, clean and reuse the bags. Make sure neither gets into the environment.

Plastic-coated boxes, plastic food boxes, or plastic without recycling marks: Dispose of safely.

Plastic screw-on tops: Dispose separately from recyclable plastic bottles. Remember that smaller caps are a choking hazard. not as good as it could be! “We are quite good at Styrofoam: See if your community has a special recycling paper and plastic but if you look in the facility for this. rubbish bins there is definitely more paper and Tires: Many places require separate disposal of plastic there than in the recycling bins” Mr tires (and collect a fee at the point of sale for that Harrington says. If you're a teacher please remind purpose). your students to use your recycling bin more often Tyvek shipping envelopes: These are the kind than your other bin , for the environment and for used by the post office and overnight delivery the sake of nature. companies.

Wet paper: In general, recyclers take a pass on Pitifully recycling in HK isn’t that good . “ In 2012 paper items that have been exposed to water. The 39% of the waste collected was recycled in HK fi b r e s m a y b e d a m a g e d , a n d t h e r e a r e which is quite low and much of it is to do with contamination risks laziness. If it isn’t convenient to put your used plastic bottle into the correct recycling bin then And Lots of other items people won’t do it.”

Says Lyndsey Nye , a ambassador for HK recycles.This is why companies like HK Recycles are making a big impact. She explained that they come to your door and collect

!

!

!

!

Air Pollution

By John Hardy Air pollution is a big problem in Hong Kong. Do you ever breathe in air and cough a bit? Well, that could be air pollution!

Air pollution is mainly caused by three things in Hong Kong - the factories in China, vehicles and cargo ships.

and disperse. Also lots of people still smoke and this adds to the air pollution in built-up areas.

Some of Hong Kong’s most populated - and therefore most polluted - areas include Mongkok, Causeway Bay and the area around Victoria Harbour.

!

!

!

!

Air pollution has been a big issue since around 1985 but it has got much worse in recent years with all the factories in mainland China releasing smoke into the air that then travels to Hong Kong.

I interviewed Christian Masset from the charity Clear The Air. He told me they have said that in countries that don’t have much air pollution, you breathe in 5000 particles per litre but if you live in Hong Kong you breathe in 1,000,000 particles per litre. That is air pollution! If you think that that is bad than listen to this: every day three people die from the effects of air pollution in Hong Kong.

!

Air pollution can be particularly bad where you have port activities and lots of boat traffic, with all the smoke and fumes from the vessels and the big container ships. Also many of Hong Kong’s buses are very old and release lots of bad fumes.

To try and address the problem, the Hong Kong government has set up 14 monitoring stations across Hong Kong which are complex systems that suck up the air and analyse the quality of it. The monitoring stations send the data to the Environment Detection Department on an hourly basis. Each station can only detect one type of air pollution and they all work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Just as there are lots of of different causes of air pollution, there are also many different types of air pollution. These include gases and dust particles, which are almost invisible, especially PM2.5, which can go into your lungs and damage your respiratory system.

It can also enter your blood vessels and heart. PM stands for particulate matter and 2.5 means 2.5 micron diameter, which is a unit of measuring.

!

Luckily, thanks to modern technology, scientists are able to understand the consequences of air pollution much better nowadays and can help provide information to governments about how serious it is. Of course in different parts of Hong Kong there are different levels of air pollution, depending on the number of people living in that area. First of all, the tall buildings that you see in the highly populated areas trap all the car fumes and make it hard for them to escape

!

When it realised how bad the situation had become, the government introduced some measures to lower the amount of air pollution. But a lot more needs to be done!

Marine Pollution

by Barnaby Hanning

!

2.

“Sharks in peril - A healthy and abundant ocean depends on predators like sharks keeping ecosystems balanced.”

!A

lot of effort has been put into landfill management to make sure that the debris when Why is the South China Sea so important? Quite handled is not blown away in the wind or washed simply, because we need water to survive; clean, away into the sea. There are lots of studies on safe water and it’s our job to to keep it this way. beach clean-ups and analysing marine debris; what it is and where it comes from so that people I spoke to Darren Gilkison at Splash Hong Kong can research and target programs to minimise to find out more about our waters. marine pollution and marine debris.

! !He told me that although there is a lot of debris, !

Above all, remember the three Rs (reduce, reoverall the water quality is not too bad and use, re-cycle) there’s a tremendous amount of marine life to ! see. I was surprised to discover that the biggest e.g. reuse your plastic bags or don’t use them at

thing that people have seen under water in Hong all, do a beach cleanup and analyse the marine Kong are some black spotted rays, two or three debris, it can be entered into a global database to meters long; also whale sharks passing through. help programs reduce marine pollution. take your rubbish home with you and place it in “They tend to migrate north in the spring and a recycling bin south in September or Autumn”.

Finally, what’s the strangest thing Darren’s seen People have also discovered turtles in Hong under the water? - a window frame and a toilet Kong’s waters. That is quite a diverse range of seat! sea creatures.

! !

!Overfishing is a huge issue in Hong Kong.

! !

The Hong Kong government introduced a trawling ban a few years ago and more schools of fish are now being seen, including barracuda. Pollution is also a major threat; pollution from land runoff, rubbish and waste tips not managing the waste properly so that it gets washed into the sea when the heavy rains come. Ships that pass are also waste producers.

!But why is this so important? It is important because the mangrove spots around Hong Kong are the breeding ground for the marine life; we need to protect those areas so that the oceans can restock. Marine life contributes greatly to the economy - leisure (junks, scuba-diving etc) and fishing! A good healthy ecosystem or healthy marine life is important to be able to fish properly.

!So, what’s the main cause of marine pollution?

WE ARE! !We are the main cause of marine pollution. It’s

either rubbish or chemicals we spray on the land or mismanagement of rubbish.

!So,

what are we doing to minimise marine pollution? There are global projects like Project Aware, which has two main focuses:

!1.

“Marine debris - supporting the movement for a trash free ocean”

!

Beach Clean Up

by Ella Wernert We went to see Jo Wilson, who lives on Lamma Island and her friend Ros, who had just finished a 42-day clean-up challenge on a beach near the Yung Shue Wan ferry pier.

!

Jo’s challenge was in support of Ecovision’s Hong Kong Clean Up. Every day for 42 days, Jo and her friends and family - and sometimes also local school children - went down to the beach with lots of buckets and pairs of gloves, and got busy!

!

When we had finished our clean-up, Jo showed us that rubbish can be used to make things. She had brought with her a toy robot that she had made for her children out of plastic bottle caps that she had found on the beach. We also met Fishy the water bottle fish!

Jo demonstrated how fish die from all the plastic that people throw in the sea by putting rubbish into Fishy’s cap mouth so we could see how it got stuck in his tummy. She also showed us a photo of a dead bird full of plastic bottle caps.

!

She explained that not enough people were reusing and recycling their rubbish.

Jo said that plastic was the main threat to wildlife in the sea and on land, because there I was surprised to see how much rubbish is so much of it and it doesn’t decompose. If there was on the beach! There were straws, you don’t recycle plastic then it will stay there lots of cigarettes, bottle tops, a few bottles, forever, unless somebody else picks it up. plastic wrappers, paper cups, juice cartons Although you shouldn’t throw glass into the and metal cans. We even found lots of little sea, at least some of it will eventually turn tiles that came from building debris and the into sand so it isn’t quite as bad. But even walls of a restaurant right next to the beach. glass will not completely disappear and will The 42-day challenge had finished, but Jo said either get washed up onto beaches or animals she cleaned it only 2 days ago and it was still might eat it and choke or get badly injured in full of rubbish again! We put some gloves on, their throat or tummy. grabbed a bucket each and did some beach cleaning ourselves.

Jo’s message is for people to try and change their rubbish habits - not accepting plastic After each clean up, Jo sorts the rubbish into bags in shops and when you go for a drink, not different categories and then she counts and using plastic straws is a good place to start! records how much rubbish there is and what type it is. Then she sends all the information to the Hong Kong government, to try and raise awareness of the problem and to help resolve it by using bins for their rubbish, recycling, reusing the plastic bottles they already have and generally using less plastic.

!

!

!

!

!! ! En-trak ! by Gayatri Singh !! !

•

Every school uses lots and• • lots of electricity.

Here at Kellett we try hard to cut down on electricity usage, but there is always lots of waste. En-trak, a computer program that helps track and monitor electricity usage in graphs, pie charts and many more forms is used at our school to help. ‘En-trak is an online portal, really,’ teacher Laura Collie says. Mrs Collie is in charge of Eco Club, a club that uses En-trak to monitor use and reward classes. When a student or teacher logs into En-trak, they can see all the electricity they are using in a bright and colourful way.

Mountain Wing, as well as from the Kowloon Bay campus. Pok Fu Lam data is split into two for ms of energy usage; the air conditioning units, and the lights and sockets. Students see nice graphs and pie charts that show which parts of the school are using the most electricity.

!

En-trak measures energy used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are obvious changes as to how much energy is used depending on the time and day. For example, there is a lot of energy usage at 1:30pm on a Wednesday when classes are working. On Saturday? not so much.

Electricity usage depends on the weather as well. In June, when everybody is boiling alive, the air conditioning is turned on full blast. In December, on the other hand, the air conditioning is turned off. This saves energy, or so you think! In reality, it’s actually spread across the seasons, because En-trak works very simply, in fact it only in December, there is a whole new problem. takes a couple of steps. Here is what happens: There are round sensors that coil It gets darker and colder in the Northern around the electricity cables by the Hemisphere, which is where Hong Kong is electricity meter. These measure the situated, it gets dark earlier in late October, electrical currents in the wires. Our energy November, December and January. That usage is measured and then sent to a means that after lunchtime you often have software cloud. That means that you can to put on the lights, which uses electricity. access all the information from the sensors In the summertime, you don’t! at any time. The sensors send information from the Ocean Wing and the En-trak, measuring every minute of every day is a good thing, because if someone forgets to switch off electrical equipment and it is on all night, the data shows that. En-trak is ver y good sof tware, and is helping the school save electricity. And that is a good thing for our earth, for our country, and for our school...

!

!

!

Light Pollution by Alex Hardy Hong Kong is a very densely-populated place, with millions of people all living very close together in tall buildings, all using lots of artificial light. People have overhead lights, lamps, computer and TV screens, tube lights and many other lights that are constantly switched on and off.

!

In addition to over-using indoor lighting, there are also issues with lights outside such as street lights - especially the light show in Central.

!

“It’s a bit like we are always in a full moon.

Sometimes people can't sleep at night, which causes stress. People have to buy thick, black-out curtains,” remarked Caroline Dingle, Research Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong, who is researching the effects of noise and light pollution on Hong Kong’s wildlife.

!

All this light is not only using a lot of energy but it can also have a negative effect on wildlife. This is because birds use the stars to navigate and all of the lights in the city confuse them. They can get lost and unable to find their nests. There have also been cases of birds flying towards the light and crashing into the windows of buildings. Lights coming from airplanes can also confuse them as they can think they are stars. “Over 1000 species of birds globally have been found dead because they crashed into buildings,” says Caroline Dingle.

!

Another problem is that light pollution can cause birds to change their natural habits of day and night. For example, in England nightingales sing during the daytime and collect their food at night. However, because of the lights at night, they carry on singing into the night and as a result, don't get very much sleep or much time to collect their food!

!

Insects in Hong Kong are also very affected by all the light pollution. They are very attracted to any source of light - for example street lights. When they are all flying around a street light they are often killed by passing tall buses. Also if you are species that eats bugs, a street light is basically a fast food restaurant and this is another reason lots of birds are attracted to the street lights.

!

The turtles that swim off Lamma Island are also hurt by light pollution. When turtles hatch on beaches they use the light of the moon to guide them back to the sea, but the lights from the buildings can make them go in the opposite direction, so they often go the wrong way!

!

Did you know that the light in Tsim Sha Tsui is 1200 times brighter than a normal dark sky

!

Did you know that Hong Kong is believed to be the worst city for light pollution?

!

During birds’ migrating season (when the birds fly south ) cities like New York and Toronto dim external lights to help the birds go the right way!

!

Unlike other countries in the world, there isn’t a law in Hong Kong to control lighting. I hope that soon new laws will be introduced to help - two things that would help are laws to control glare and having covers over street lights to concentrate the light where we need it, on the ground, and not also all over the sky.

Eco Club

programme) so that they know if their spot checks, school announcements and talks they give pupils are having any effect. Mrs. Collie

by Neel Mehta says that “a lot of people making small changes equals a big difference.” The Eco club is making Kellett School’s Eco Club was formed in 2013 is a lot of progress. They have made us stop with just 15 children. Since then, it has grown leaving lights on most of the time. They are to comprise 16 children and is currently run by going to keep changing us over the years.

Mrs. Collie, a Year 6 teacher. Students interested in joining had to create a powerpoint The sixteen members in the Eco Club are sorted or poster explaining how they themselves were into three groups. Two of the groups are on green and what they would start doing to help spot checks while the other one looks at Enthe environment. The mission of the Eco Club is trak. The members of the Eco Club are very to make the whole school greener and then enthusiastic and committed to what they are doing. The Eco Club members don’t mind the spread this lesson to the rest of the world. extra work they have to do and don’t ever give The main focus of the Eco Club this year is to up. The Eco club’s motto is

!

!

!

! !

monitor and reduce the electricity we waste while we are at school, especially at break time “Use It But Don’t Waste It!” or lunch time - for example not having lights and air cons switched on when no-one is in the room and turning computers off after use instead of leaving them on standby.

!

The club hopes that over time, every student will change their behaviour and t a k e r e s p o n s i b i l i t y fo r reducing waste - and it will become a natural habit. The Eco Club manages to do this by carrying out random Eco Club spot checks at each classroom during lunch and other breaks. The maximum points per spot check are 200. There are four categories, each worth 50 points. The scoreboard by the gymnasium and music room shows which classes are winning. At the end of each month, the Eco club awards the Eco Trophy to the greenest class in KS1 and KS2. The problem with the spot checks is that the Eco Club members are in Year 6. So when there is a spot check, the Year 6 somehow seem to know about it. However, one of the strange things is that even though the Year 6 know when the spot checks are going to be done, they still haven’t won the trophy!

!

Eco Club also track the electricity we use at school using En-trak (a computer software

!

There is only one Earth, and it is each of our duty to keep it clean and green. Think of the Earth as a lemon. If we keep squeezing it, there will be nothing left. Therefore we should all support the good work of the Eco club.

Hong Kong Food Waste

by Rupert Hanning

!

“Hong Kong is a city that loves to eat.

Unfortunately, we’re also a city prone to waste.”

! !

Feeding Hong Kong.

In Manila, the capital of the Philippines there is a landfill site called Smokey Mountain which is a place almost entirely made from rubbish including food waste; 40,000,000 tonnes of waste to be exact. It is known as Smokey Mountain because of the constant burning of tires and wood. The horrific thing is that people actually live there, 30,000 of them, working on the site to try and make a living from the fifty metre high pile of rubbish.

!

This could be our future! Every day in Hong Kong 3,200 tonnes of food waste is dumped, a figure that has almost doubled in the last 5 years. The food waste accounts for about one third of all solid rubbish sent to landfill sites, which will be full by 2018.

!

The greenhouse gases released from decomposing food on these sites such as methane and carbon dioxide capture and retain heat in our already polluted atmosphere.

!

It isn’t just a Hong Kong problem either. The one third waste in Hong Kong is reflected across the whole world. 1,300,000,000 tonnes of food produced for humans is dumped every year. 20% 40% of all fruit and vegetables in the UK do not make it onto the supermarket shelves, and thats before people buy it and later waste it. It is also estimated that 50% of fish and seafood caught in North America and Oceania is wasted. If we stopped wasting food in this way it would be the equivalent in taking one in every five cars off the road.

!

Charities such as Feeding Hong Kong are dedicated to reducing the amount of food sent to landfill.

They run a food bank dedicated to taking perfectly good food from shops and factories and giving it to people in need. Every day volunteers collect fresh food that would otherwise be thrown away and give it to other charities working with the hungry in the Hong Kong community.

!

So what can we do? Firstly we need to make sure we only buy and prepare food that we know is going to be eaten. Taking care in the shops and being led into overbuying when special offers are on is one way to do this. Secondly when we eat out in restaurants we should be careful not to over order, and if we do have leftovers ask for a takeaway container so that it doesn’t end up being sent to landfill. Lastly, we need to be careful and thoughtful about our snacks and lunches at school, being responsible about how much we should be eating to reduce waste.

Lamma Winds by Olivia Woolhouse and Sebastian Walsh

On Lamma island there is only one wind turbine - a small one made in Germany and the blades were made in Denmark. The wind turbine is 46 meters tall, it is mostly made of steel and the blades are made of fibre with steel inside. The model is a prototype for the Lamma island wind farm that is being made. It is also for educational purposes.

The wind turbine also has a red aeration warning light so that in the night planes can see the wind turbine and do not fly into it.

This wind turbine is doing a very big job for the Hong Kong electricity, but unfortunately it can only power a little bit of Hong Kong.

!

Lamma island’s wind turbine is an important part of Hong Kong’s future use of electricity. We interviewed wind turbine specialist Wan Hiu Fai, the wind turbine manager at HK Electric. He explained to us that a wind turbine can power around 250 houses and make 800-1000 MWH in a year. Of course to power a wind turbine you need wind and in the summer there is far less wind, so as a result there is very little output.

Most of the year’s electricity is generated in autumn and winter, because it is very windy then.

To generate the full output of the wind turbine you would need 12-13 metres per second of wind. You usually get that type of wind when there is a typhoon.

The highest the wind turbine can ever go is 12-13 metres per sec even if there is However, more than you need to generate that much, it if you would like to power the whole of Hong will still stay the same.

Kong you would have to put 40 wind turbines on every kilometre in Hong Kong, so this wind turbine is doing quite a good job considering “Wind power provides less than 1 percent of its all by itself. the world’s electricity, in some countries however, wind power is more important. It turns out the wind turbine does not Nearly 10 percent of Denmark’s electricity is generate much of Hong Kong’s electricity. made by wind power.” explained Mr. Hiu Fai. only one percent of electricity consumed by

! !

!

!

Wind turbines have been around for a long time.The oldest wind turbine is in fact a windmill and it was in Cleveland, Ohio in 1888 in the 19th century built by Charles F Brush.

It was made of 144 rotor blades made of cedar (the type of wood). Where as this turbine was made out of steel and the blade is made out of of fibre with a little bit of steel inside it. The wind turbine is automatic. It detects the wind direction and then calculates whether it turns clockwise or anti-clockwise.

!

the city. We learnt that The Hong Kong Electricity Company is planning to build a wind farm with about 23-30 wind turbines to generate power for lots of houses to help the environment.

!

However the HK electric are desperate to generate enough green electricity to help the environment and so are we.

!

Kellett Tell It Spring 2015 Living Green by Tyler Jones Did you know over 1 million straws are used in a week in HK? We need to stop using straws! And it not just straws, the overuse of plastic in general is a big problem in Hong Kong, whether it’s plastic s h opp i n g b ag s , p la stic wrapping on food, plastic plates and cutlery. Plastic may be convenient but it cannot be easily recycled. It takes factories to make them and factories pollute the air. So if we use more plastic, we need more factories which leads to more pollution. We need to stop using straws!

!

During our visit to Jo Wilson, environmental campaigner, on Lamma Island she told us that on one particular beach forty eight pieces of rubbish are washed up every day, much of it plastic. Also found regularly are polystyrene, cigarette butts and BB gun bullets. One BB gun bullet is found everyday, so if you do the maths ever y week there are seven BB gun bullets washed up! As Jo says, “No BB guns for birthdays, you are killing the planet!”

!

!

we can make it a better Unplug and p l a c e . O u r w o r l d , o u r switch off all appliances choice. Save the planet” when you are not using them.

So what can we do at home to live in a greener way, Wash clothes in cold water just like Jo Wilson? whenever possible.

! !

Switch your air conditioning unit off in the winter and set the temperature at 23 degrees in the summer to save money on energy costs

!

Install compact fluorescent We need to take time out to light bulbs (CFLs) when make the world a better your older incandescent place. Jo says “Step by step bulbs burn out.

! !

Use a dr ying rack or clothesline to save the energy rather than using a drying machine.