Karen, a volunteer from UK charity ‘Keep Britain Tidy’ visited school today to give an inspiring assembly on how we can all be stewards of our wonderful planet by helping to keep Britain tidy. Stewardship is a key element of our Catholic School Values, and one that Holy Redeemer (as an Eco Schools Green Flag school) takes very seriously.

Karen talked to us about how we can reduce our waste by buying package free items, recycling packaging, or reusing it. She talked about the importance of picking up litter, and recycling suitable items, and also shocked us by telling us how much rubbish is in our oceans, and that 80% of it comes from communities like ours. 

Karen told us about her eco hero, Boyan Slat, who (at fifteen) was so upset at seeing rubbish in the ocean while on holiday, that he worked with his science teacher to design a process for collecting rubbish from the sea. After several years of hard work Boyan finally managed to get his ‘Ocean Clean-up‘ design put into practice and they have so far managed to remove more than 9,450,144 kg from the planet’s waterways. All of the plastic recovered is recycled. 

Ocean Clean-up, the non-profit foundation set up by Boyan Slat, aims to be able to remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040, though its dual strategy: intercepting plastic in rivers to cut the inflow of pollution, and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean and won’t go away by itself. When the oceans are clean, they say, they can put themselves out of business! We hope that they achieve this very soon and will do our bit by making sure we are not contributing to additional plastics ending up in our rivers, and ultimately the oceans. 

Thank you Karen for help inspire our stewardship, and to Keep Britain Tidy for all the fantastic work they do. Thank you also to Mrs Barker and the Eco Council, for organising the assembly and for buying us our own litter picker kits for school. If any families want to borrow and litter picking kit to clean up their local area, speak to Mrs Barker.