Plastics

Audience

Topic

Conservation

For more information, see the eePRO blog: Beyond the 3Rs

This collection explores innovative approaches to plastic pollution education beyond traditional knowledge transmission. Research from the UK shows children aged 11–15 have complex, contradictory relationships with plastics that educators should acknowledge, while a Canadian study immersed toddlers in plastic excess to create transformative sensorial encounters. The collection highlights effective structured interventions, including a hybrid middle school curriculum combining lectures and hands-on experiments that improved microplastic understanding, and Chile's tiered school certification program that enhanced students' waste behaviors. Additionally, the research introduces "ecomedia literacy" for analyzing environmental impacts of digital technologies and demonstrates how online courses with practical applications can inspire global action against plastic pollution.

Isobel Talks

This research explores how children aged 11–15 relate to plastics, discovering their interactions span critical knowledge in consumer cultures, unnoticed everyday routines, and creative engagement. The researchers recommend environmental educators acknowledge these complex, existing relationships rather than simply viewing plastics as a problem to solve.

Environmental education practitioners should recognize and engage with children's existing complex, embodied, and often contradictory relationships with plastics in their everyday lives

This article examines how children encounter and relate to plastics in their everyday lives, going beyond traditional environmental education approaches. The research involved 13 children aged 11-15 from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds at a secondary school in Birmingham, England. The study employed multiple methods including interviews, a mobile phone app that allowed children to document plastic encounters, and experimental arts-based workshops where children created sculptures from "waste" plastics.

Posted: 05/15/25

Isobel Talks

This article evaluates a Massive Open Online Course on Marine Litter that successfully increased knowledge and inspired action among 33,000+ participants from 92 countries, with 64% reporting successful action plans and 72% sharing knowledge with others. The findings demonstrate that online environmental education with activating learning methods can effectively develop leadership and inspire informed action against marine plastic pollution globally.

Effective environmental education on plastics combines activating learning methods with real-world application opportunities to inspire global action on complex issues

This article evaluates the impact of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Marine Litter designed to address the growing environmental problem of marine plastic pollution. Developed by the Open Universiteit in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the MOOC has been running since 2015 and has attracted over 33,000 participants globally.

Posted: 05/15/25

Isobel Talks

This research introduces "ecomedia literacy" as a framework for teaching critical awareness of digital technologies' environmental impacts, including plastic pollution, through four interconnected zones: ecoculture, political ecology, ecomateriality, and lifeworld.

Ecomedia literacy reveals environmental impacts of plastic technology through cultural, political, and material analysis

This article explores how media literacy and environmental education can be integrated through the concept of "ecomedia literacy." The author explains how metaphors commonly used to describe digital media, such as "cloud storage" and "streaming," misleadingly suggest environmental neutrality while masking significant ecological impacts. Digital technologies create vast amounts of plastic pollution, depend heavily on freshwater for manufacturing, cooling data centers, and other processes, yet these impacts remain largely invisible to users.

Posted: 05/15/25

Isobel Talks

This study created a curriculum where Canadian toddlers were immersed in excessive amounts of plastic to disrupt their taken-for-granted relationships with these materials. Through six stories of children's encounters with plastic excess, the authors demonstrate how direct experiences with plastic's unruliness and persistence made its normally invisible presence visible and potentially transformative.

Direct encounters with plastic waste build children's environmental response beyond traditional 3Rs education

The article situates the "queer synthetic curriculum" within the emerging field of common worlding waste pedagogies, which reject traditional environmental sustainability approaches in early childhood education that focus solely on waste management. The authors argue that typical "reduce, reuse, recycle" initiatives merely move waste "out of sight and out of mind," maintaining capitalist consumption patterns while failing to address our complex relationships with waste materials.

Posted: 05/15/25

Isobel Talks

This research tested a hybrid curriculum combining lectures, hands-on experiments, and peer collaboration that significantly improved American middle school students' understanding of microplastics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Student-created posters and feedback revealed the effectiveness of multiple teaching methods in increasing environmental awareness, with 81% depicting aquatic pollution and 56% specifically addressing microplastics.

Lectures, labs, and peer work boost students' microplastic pollution awareness in hybrid classrooms

This article examines the effectiveness of a new science curriculum designed to increase 8th-grade students' knowledge and awareness of microplastic pollution. The study involved 84 students aged 13-15 in a hybrid learning environment during the COVID-19 pandemic, with students alternating between in-person and remote participation. The study was conducted in the United States at a public middle school in Massachusetts with schooling from grades 6 to 8.

Posted: 05/15/25

Isobel Talks

This study evaluated Chile's tiered green school certification program, finding that schools with the highest "excellent" certification level showed the strongest improvement in children's pro-environmental behaviors related to plastic waste. Interestingly, children in schools with basic certification often outperformed those in intermediate-certified schools, suggesting non-linear effects and the need to better differentiate benefits across certification levels.

School environmental certification programs significantly improve children's plastic waste behaviors, particularly at the highest certification level

The study evaluated Chile's National System for Environmental Certification of Educational Establishments (SNCAE), a voluntary program that certifies schools at three levels: basic, intermediate, and excellent. Each certification level represents a different degree of environmental commitment in curriculum, management, and relationship with the environment.

Posted: 05/15/25