3rd July International Plastic Bag Free Day

The 3rd of July is International Plastic Bag Free Day, a global initiative to eliminate the use of plastic bags. Plastic bags may seem like a useful convenience for grocery purchasing, but they have a devastating impact on the environment. Plastic bags can take up to 500 years to decompose, so they make up a significant portion of what remains in our landfills and pollutes our waterways.

I have highlighted this day before here and here, but although our supermarkets and many other shops no longer have single use plastic bags, there is still a problem and more and more picture books for very young children seem to want to 'hammer' home the message. One of the library staff thinks we are scaring our preschoolers? Are we? I'd like to know what effect they have.

In the library we have:

• Bag in the Wind  by Ted Kooser and Barry Root

One cold morning in early spring, a bulldozer pushes a pile of garbage around a landfill and uncovers an empty plastic bag — a perfectly good bag, the color of the skin of a yellow onion, with two holes for handles — that someone has thrown away. Just then, a puff of wind lifts the rolling, flapping bag over a chain-link fence and into the lives of several townsfolk — a can-collecting girl, a homeless man, a store owner — not that all of them notice.

• Jelly-Boy  by Nicole Godwin and Christopher Nielsen

What happens when a jellyfish falls in love with a plastic bag she mistakes for a jelly-boy? Jelly-Boy is different. He is big and strong. And not as wobbly as the other Jelly-boys. By the time Jelly-Girl discovers the dangerous truth about her new friend, it may already be too late. 

• Saving Seal  by Diane Jackson Hill and Craig Smith

Lizzie and Grandpa Dave are motivated to do something about cleaning up their Bay and saving the marine life who are being threatened more and more by the rubbish found in the Bay and on their beaches. They encourage the towns people to join them in their fight against plastic pollution devastating their beaches and harming marine life. 

• Little Pago by Lauren Briggs

 Little Pago and his friends set out on an adventurous journey in search for food, but not everything floating in the ocean is safe for a baby turtle to eat. A plastic bag is easily mistaken for some of Little Pago's favourite food. Little Pago is a mascot for the welfare of all Australian sea turtles and shines a light on one of the critical threats that face sea turtles, plastic waste in our ocean. It encourages readers to challenge the way we live, so that collectively we can work towards preventing these majestic sea creatures becoming extinct.

• Little Turtle and the Changing Sea by Becky Davies and Jennie Poh

Little Turtle loves the ocean with her whole heart. As the years pass, she repeats an incredible journey across the world to the beautiful coral reefs. But one day she finds that plastic has invaded her beloved ocean. Could Turtle's journey be over forever?

• A Bag and a Bird by Pamela Allen

This is a story of a plastic bag and a bird - a cautionary tale about taking care of our environment as well as being a wonderful showcase of some of the famous sights of Sydney.

• Somebody Swallowed Stanley by Sarah Roberts and Hannah Peck

Most jellyfish have dangly-gangly tentacles, but Stanley has two handles...

• One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the recycling women of Gambia by Miranda Paul and Elizabeth Zunon

For years, plastic bags were a cheap and convenient option for carrying goods in Njau, Gambia. However, when these bags broke or were no longer needed, they were carelessly discarded, leading to an unsightly accumulation of plastic waste alongside roads. Isatou Ceesay decided to take action, and she began to collect the plastic bags and recycle them into something new. Her efforts not only helped to clean up the environment, but also provided income for women in her community who had been struggling to make ends meet.

3rd November World Jellyfish Day

It is Jellyfish Day. Jellyfish look beautiful but they are often dangerous because of their stingers and they are indicators of unhealthy oceans for scientists.

Once, the ocean was full of friends. But lately, a little jellyfish named Luna has noticed that things are changing--friends are disappearing! When she sets out to find them, she discovers that everyone has a part to play in protecting the careful balance of the ocean. In this beautifully illustrated and timely tale, little Luna comes up with a powerful way to deliver a message that inspires helpfulness and hope. 

What a stunning cover, this new book about jellyfish has! I have written about this day before here and here, but jellyfish books always seem to have amazing illustrations so I wanted to share this new one with you. You can see Julia read her book at Bristol Aquarium if you do not have a copy. This story tells us that jellyfish are an indicator species. Jellyfish are a profoundly powerful symbol for the declining health of our world's oceans. They are known as an indicator species because changes in their populations represent greater changes in the ecosystem. Around the world today, jellyfish are thriving in record numbers because they can live in the warmer seas and among the rubbish in it.

Jelly-Boy  by Nicole Godwin, Somebody Swallowed Stanley  by Sarah Roberts would be good companion reads as they also deal with jellyfish and rubbish in the ocean and Little Turtle and the Changing Sea by Becky Davis would be a good compare and contrast.If you would like to explore jellyfish further see what you could borrow here.

Also new,  is a picture book story about an expedition to find a giant jellyfish. The Search for the Giant Arctic Jellyfish  is a debut book by author illustrator Chloe Savage. The subtitle 'What magic lies beneath?' makes you need to read it even more.

3rd July Plastic Bag Free Day

There has been so much talk about going without plastic bags that even the five year olds I teach can tell you why we should. We live near the water, so these children spend a lot of time at the beach, on boats and in the water. They know about the damage they cause in the ocean especially to turtles, but it is always a topic that needs revisiting, so when I saw this new book at the bookshop I purchased it for the library. Someone Swallowed Stanley by animal behaviourist and wildlife expert Sarah Roberts reiterates this important message about turtles and plastic bags and it has a child as the wildlife hero. It also has fun illustrations by Hannah Peck who seems to have enjoyed giving all the sea animals anthropomorphic mannerisms. If you are looking for other books about plastic bags see this earlier entry in my blog.

3rd July International Plastic Bag Free Day

Today needs to be a  Plastic Bag Free Day! My local council has designated the whole of July as a plastic free time in order to make each of us contemplate what plastic bags do to our environment.International Plastic 

This most popular of disposable carrying devices that  we pick up from retailers are used for an incredibly short time, usually under 25 minutes, and are then disposed of. They may pass out of our thinking then, but they do not pass out of our world. Plastic bags remain in the world for anywhere from 100-500 years before finally decaying completely, and have a profound impact upon our environment as a result.

Out in the great reaches of the ocean are massive reefs made up of all sorts of plastic waste, and plastic bags play heavily among them. Such is the magnitude of the problem that these great floating islands reach hundreds of miles, like great monuments to mankind’s wastefulness, and disregard for the world upon which we live. International Plastic Bag Free Day gives us an opportunity to remind ourselves, and others, that every action we take, and every bag we dispose of, effects the lives of everyone in the world for generations to come.

I find that the children I teach are very aware of plastic in the oceans, but not so aware of its ramifications elsewhere such as in landfill. Luckily there are some wonderful picture books that can be used to start any discussion on what happens to plastic when it is not disposed of responsibly. 

See:
• One Plastic Bag  by Miranda Paul and Elizabeth Zunon tells the story of Isatou Ceesaya, a Gambian woman, 
 who came up with a way to recycle the plastic bags that had littered the landscape in her nation, an act that saved the environment and transformed her community.

• Bag in the Wind by Ted Kooser and Barry Root. This story follows a plastic bag on its  journey from a landfill into a series of townspeople's lives. One cold morning in early spring, a bulldozer pushes a pile of garbage around a landfill and uncovers an empty plastic bag a perfectly good bag, the colour of the skin of a yellow onion, with two holes for handles that someone has thrown away. Just then, a puff of wind lifts the rolling, flapping bag over a chain-link fence and into the lives of several townsfolk a can-collecting girl, a homeless man, a store owner not that all of them notice.

• Theo and the Giant Plastic Ball  by The United Nations Environment Program and Adrienne Kennaway tells of Theo and his quest to improve at football by making a ball out of discarded plastic bags. This then leads to clearing up his local environment and the realisation that by the community working together they could maintain a cleaner, more healthy environment.

• Plastic Ahoy! Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by Patricia Newman and Anne Crawley tells of a team of scientists who explore the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where millions of pieces of plastic have gathered, having drifted there from rivers, beaches, and ocean traffic all over the world.

• The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle by Alison Inches and Pete Whitehead is the diary of a plastic bottle. It goes on a journey from the refinery plant, to the manufacturing line, to the store shelf, to a garbage can, and finally to a recycling plant where it emerges into its new life...as a fleece jacket!