Hi,

We thought we would share with you some of our other Eco Successes from our present Eco journey over the past two years.

As you know litter is a big problem in our cities. You only have to look round the streets to realise that people still drop litter instead of taking it to the nearest bin and disposing of it properly. It makes our streets look untidy especially to tourists, and can cause other problems for the environment and animals in particular. Small creatures like mice can crawl inside bottles or jars left on the ground and be trapped there and never escape. At St. Albert’s Primary our pupils have been involved in litter picking activities for years. Classes have a rota to follow so they know when it is their turn to clean up the playground. We have litter picking kits that we use for this and pupils work in pairs to pick up the litter that others have dropped.

Every year we run at least one litter survey in our grounds to find the type and quantity of litter being dropped there. These surveys have revealed that some of the litter in our grounds is being dropped over the fence by adults, which is obvious from the type that it is e.g. beer cans. Other bits may be blown in by the wind.  Here you can see some pictures of our pupils taking part in litter picking surveys in our grounds in May 2018.

 Litter is not just a problem in our playgrounds and streets. Litter that is dropped on the streets or blown out of over-filled bins can be swept down drains, especially storm drains and ends up out at sea. This together with the litter that people leave behind on beaches is causing a great deal of damage to  marine life   all over the world. Plastic bags are often eaten by sea turtles when they are mistaken for jellyfish, sea birds have been found dead having eaten pieces of plastic and for whales it is the same story. Some of the deepest parts of the world’s oceans have been found to contain plastic rubbish.

Our Eco Committee wanted to do something to make a difference to this situation, since we were tackling Water and Litter as two of our Eco topics, and so with money they had raised through recycling old clothes with the Rag Bag company, we hired a bus to take a Primary 5 and members of the Eco Committee to Prestwick beach for the day to collect as much litter as we could. Although there did not appear to be much litter at first we weighed what we collected and the bags of rubbish came to 8 Kg. That is 8Kg that won’t be eaten by sea creatures or birds.

While we were at the beach we also took part in a nurdle hunt. What is a nurdle? Nurdles are small plastic pellets about the size of a lentil. Billions are used each year to make nearly all our plastic products and can  end up washing up on our shores. Nurdles can be spilled into our seas from industry. Nurdles can sometimes go unnoticed as they are so small but they are causing lots of problems for marine life. Nurdles can be mistaken for food by marine animals and are highly toxic since they can attract background pollutants like PCBs and DDT. These dangerous compounds can then enter the food chain.

Although we looked closely at the sand, we couldn’t find nurdles on the section of beach where we searched, but we found lots of other small pieces of plastic that could be consumed by birds.

Here you can see some pictures of our day, which everyone enjoyed. We had our lunch on the beach and played games and paddled in the sea. For some children this was their first visit to a Scottish beach. We were very lucky as the weather was glorious too.