The Student Enviroschools Team (Green Team) has been looking at the possibility of our school having plastic free lunches. Plastic rubbish is a real problem in the world today. Plastic rubbish is dumped in landfill slowly degrading to toxic chemicals for upto 1000 years. Plastic is often washed out to the ocean forming the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Sea animals eat the plastic thinking that it is food and can get sick or die. They die because their stomach gets filled with plastic and they are not hungry so they starve to death.

The students in the Green Team performed a waste audit sorting all the waste in the school on a single day. They found we had enough plastic rubbish thrown out in one day to fill a 60 litre tub. Sadly, it was enough plastic to fill five turtles and a penguin in just one day. (see photos)

Have you ever heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Well it's so sad! Millions of animals die from it each year and you know what, we are the ones killing them. WE ARE MAKING IT BIGGER.

Amelia Nestman

The tiny molecules of the plastic go in the food. And if it goes in our bodies it can make us sick and that is another danger to us.

Atty Velhal

The great pacific garbage patch is about 1.6 million square wide. Sea creatures will die if we keep on littering. The turtles will think that the plastic bags are jellyfish then they will eat them and then die.

Claudia Barnes

Plastic in lunches, such as chippy packets and glad wraps, are floating out of bins and make its way to the sea with some help from the wind. Something shocking from google is that 100,000 marine sea creatures die from plastic entanglement or thinking that it is food. One plastic bag can kill numerous sea creatures because a single plastic bag can take over 1000 years to decompose, while plastic bottles last 450 years. So it only starts with one person to make one little change to make a big difference in the world. There is no need for plastic when you have beeswax wraps and containers. All the things you can use to store food. So if you want our planet and sea creatures alive and happy try using those things.

Casie Whitmore

Without a doubt plastic should be used less, by hosting plastic free lunches we would be eliminating a lot of plastic. The use of plastic is skyrocketing! The average human uses 0.5 kgs of plastic each week. If we times that by how many kids at our school, we would get a usage of 200 kgs a week. If we introduced plastic free lunches we could decrease that number. If we have this option there's no reason not to implement it.

Georgia Gill

Plastic is harming our environment and native wildlife. How can we stop most of this happening? Well we can start with plastic free lunches! About 8 million tons of plastic enters our ocean a year. WOW thats a lot!! If this keeps going on scientists will believe that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. Most species of marine animals will die out.

Indy Malone

I think we should go plastic free always because over one million marine animals are killed each year due to our plastic usage! And we can make a difference, but do we? So Many schools have gone plastic free, we don't want to be the pink penguin, like seriously that would be not cool. Look, the fish eat the plastic, we eat the fish, we get sick.

Logan Hart

Firstly, there will be a lot less plastic even if we do plastic free lunches one day a week. Secondly, even though lunches will be harder to make the Great Pacific ocean patch will shrink just a little bit, but at least we will make a difference. Even the tiniest amount of plastic reduced will change the world. Lastly there are lots of alternatives for plastic. You can use beeswax wraps instead of plastic wraps. That is why I think we should do plastic free lunches at school.

Matilda Pinner

If we said yes to plastic free lunches we could make a small difference that would lead to a big difference that could change the world!

Lyla Desmond

There are several reasons why Khandallah School is trying to get plastic free lunches. Firstly, if we have less plastic in our lunches then less plastic will go into the sea and that means that there is less chance for the animals to eat all the little pieces of plastic that are floating in the sea. Every year 8 million pieces of plastic enter our ocean all because of littering and not recycling and trying to reduce the plastic that we use. The most affected animals in the ocean are the Sea Turtles, Dolphins, Albatross and the other sea birds.

Sasha Handley-Craig

How do you pack a lunch without plastic? Storage contianers and wax wraps are your best bet. Simply pop your sandwich or leftover in a container to take to school or use wax wraps to keep products such as cake and cheese fresh.

Sophie Low

So, to sum it up if 400 kids start to have plastic free lunches then that could make a difference in the amount of plastic we send to the ocean each year. If you're like me and you don’t want to see our oceans and beaches ruined then hop on board with plastic free lunches.

Sophie Paku