MAIN PHOTO: The Ocean Defenders group at Riverside Education Centre in Milford. They’re working on info to bring awareness of the harmful effects of plastic pollution. (Healey photo)
MILFORD: Eight Grade 8 students at Riverside Education Centre are aiming to spread awareness of the harms of plastic pollution to their peers and other generations so that future generations won’t suffer.
The students are known as the Ocean Defenders. Teacher Vickie Morrow is overseeing the students, who began the group last year.
Manny Brennan is one of the students in the group. He was tabbed as the official student to speak to The Laker News when we visited on Dec. 10 to learn more about what they’re doing.
“We’re trying to spread awareness about plastic pollution in the rivers and oceans,” said Manny. “We’re also interested in helping find solutions to the problem of plastic pollution.”
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Manny explained why the students wanted to start the group at REC, with full support of the admin and Morrow.
“Last year we were doing a project for Mrs. Morrow’s class materials class about plastic pollution,” he said. “During the research, I was like, oh this is actually a big problem.
“As students, what can we do to help? So this group was created from that idea.”
Innis Ramsay is another student in the group. She gave an analogy of a person swimming in the ocean where microplastics from all the garbage that dumps in different parts of the world all will gather.
“When you swim, when you open your mouth underneath the water, you swallow microplastics,” said Innis.
“When you eat food that come out of plastic, you eat microplastics.
“Basically, over time, you’re basically just eating a bunch of microplastics. Eventually it will clog up your system if you eat too much and then you’ll die.”
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Innis wanted to be part of the Ocean Defenders because she thought it would be fun, and they got to create infographics and posters.
“We got to create these stuff to try to warn people about these things,” said Innis, who calls Enfield home. “But now we’re doing this interview, and we might be doing an ocean cleanup later in the year.
“I think it’s pretty fun just to do these things.”
She said the group goes to the Shubenacadie River and test the water.
“Last time we went, we checked for the bacteria in the river, and other times we checked for how much minerals were in the river,” said Innis. “It’s just really fun to go out there and hang out with my friends and protect the ocean, protect the environment.
“The environment is so important.”
Another student Norah Stead said the infographics show how plastic pollution in the local river affects what happens with activity near the waterways in the area.
“They show you what takes place when you fish, if you go swimming, or like what Maddy (Ryan) was saying, if you take your animals to the water,” said Norah.
“We want to share as much information about plastic pollution on these infographics and put them around the community so people can see and learn.
“People need to be aware of something that’s very real and very close to us.”
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Morrow said one of the things the students really wanted to focus on, especially with the infographics, was to make sure that it was important enough for people to look at them.
“The way that we’ve themed them is here’s a picture of a person playing at the river with their dog,” said Morrow. “We’re really trying hard to capture people’s attention from the activities that they really, really love to do on the river so that there’ll be more reason to make changes that are positive.
“We find that whenever you go around and you see posters about climate change or cutting down plastic, it’s doesn’t hit a home as much because people can’t make a connection to it.
We’ve been really trying to focus on getting local data and also talking to people about what they love to do on the river.
“We’ve learned so much.”
The other students who are members of the Ocean Defenders are: Brooklyn MacPhee; Winnie Tudor; Abbie Fulton; and Saren Mercer-Lodge.
