25th May International Plastic Free Day

It is International Plastic Free Day, introduced by Free The Ocean (FTO). The goal? Avoid using single plastic use for one day (at least). Don't buy it. Refuse it. Don't use it. As explained on the website, "If every person in the world stopped using one single-use piece of plastic for one day, we’d avoid over 7.6 BILLION items of plastic on that single day." The occurrence aims to make people aware of how much plastic they usually use and how much it is omnipresent in our lives. And hopefully, it will show them that not using plastic is doable!

This is different from International Plastic Bag Free Day which is observed every year on 3rd July or Skip the Straw Day which is held on the fourth Friday in February or Plastic Free July, all of which are days to remember the impact of single-use plastics and efforts to stem the tide of litter and waste.

At school we have Plastic Free days for lunches and students are encouraged to use lunch containers again and again, even the school canteen lunches come in non plastic containers that are returned to the canteen and washed. So the students at school are very aware of 'the concept of one-use plastic'. When they read books about ocean pollution they are horrified and come to talk to you about what they have read.

If you put the word 'plastic' in my blog Search bar, lots of entries will come up with suggestions of books to read. Here's just a selection of books you'll find in the library.

13th January Rubber Ducky Day

In my last entry I mentioned rubber duckies and on the third of January I wrote about plastic straws in the ocean and on the 13th January it is Rubber Ducky Day. This apparently is the rubber ducky from Sesame Street's birthday and strictly speaking it has nothing to do with an accident at sea in January 1992, however this event is far more significant than a bath toy's birthday.

I have written about this day before but more has been published since then and the true story it is based on needs to be shared so that we become aware of just what is in and what happens on our oceans.

All three of the books below came about because on January 10th 1992  a storm at sea in the Pacific Ocean set in motion one of the largest and most unusual studies into global ocean currents. A freighter traveling from Hong Kong to America was caught up in a storm, which tipped the vessel enough for  several shipping containers to be dumped into the waters, one of which contained a consignment of 28,000 bath toys, many of which were yellow plastic ducks.

The Friendly Floatees, as they were called, first began to wash up on the Alaskan coast towards the end of 1992, approximately 3,200 kilometres from their point of origin. A year went by and a further 400 followed suit traveling to the eastern coast of the Gulf of Alaska. Each reported toy  was entered into an Ocean Surface Currents Simulation (OSCAR), a computer model created by oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer and his colleague James Ingraham. The model combines data on air pressure and the speed and direction of weather systems to map the path of ocean current indicators, such as the seafaring rubber ducks. By 2007 ducks had turned up in South America, England and Australia.

To learn more about this watch:

• The Epic Journey of the Plastic Ducks

• Ducks Overboard by Christiane Dorion

And/or read:

There are adult books by Donovan  Hohn and Curtis Ebbesmeyer about this event, but these three books inspired by this event are for children.

 

• 10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle

• Ducky  by Eve Bunting and David Wisniewski

• Ducks Overboard! by Markus Motum

If you don't have these books or if you are just looking for others to extend this idea, try:

• Flotsam by David Wiesner

• The Mess That We Made by Michelle Lord and Julia Blattman

• Tracking Trash by Loree Griffin Burns

• The Global Ocean  by Rochelle Strauss and Natasha Donovan

What did the duck that came to Australia say about its journey?