'This is a generation challenging their parents on the environment': how schools are taking
"We are at a unique stage in our history,” David Attenborough said to the audience in the final episode of Blue Planet II. “Never before have we had such an awareness of what we’re doing to the planet. And never before have we had the power to do something about it.”
The most watched programme of 2017 has done much to raise awareness of the damage plastic does to wildlife – with the final instalment showing albatross parents feeding it to their hungry chicks. Earlier episodes had featured a whale carrying her dead newborn calf, likely poisoned by plastic in her milk, and a turtle caught in a plastic sack.
Cutting the use of plastic is a cause some schools have been rallying around. A group of 19 nurseries announced in November that it was banning the use of glitter among its 2,500 children this Christmas. As a ubiquitous microplastic, glitter easily finds its way into waterways and oceans, much like microbeads, which will be subject to a government ban in cosmetics from the end of 2017.
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photo credit: NOAA Marine Debris Program