You threw the plastic straw away. Confess it, You thought that nothing would happen when you do it only for once. I’ll tell you what would happen. Everything around you, will change. The cars, the human will come and go, the winds will blow, the days will follow the nights and the nights will follow the days. The seasons will change, but this pretty, colorful and innocent looking pieces of plastic, will not leave your earth for 400 years. It will get dragged from one place to another. When it comes together with other tiny pieces of innocent plastic thrown by billions of people who say nothing will happen, it will form stacks, and when it is finally cut into tiny pieces, its presence will either cause the death of a sea creature or it will take its place in your body by turning into microplastics in the fish you eat or the salt on your table.

Since it can not be recycled,  its damage to the nature is very high. Although we are environmentally sensitive individuals, we have noticed that plastic straws have an important place in our lives together with their innocent appearance and we decided to do an awareness study at our school. As the first job, we detected the points that give plastic straws in our school.

As far as we learned from the points we identified, the plastic straws were given mostly for ayran and fruit juice at our school and our use of plastic straws was very high. We are aware of the fact that this is not just our school’s, or Ankara’s or Turkey’s problem. This is a problem of the whole world. So we took action to make a difference.

We asked our friends to throw the straws they used in the bottles we placed on each floor, in every corridor, in front of the dining hall and in many other places. When they saw straws collected in a few days, they couldn’t believe it either. Upon this, we started to raise the awareness. We aimed to attract our friends’ attention to the subject and reduce the amount of plastic straws used with our school radio talk, class presentations, slogans and posters.

We warned sales staff that they should not dispense straws in every beverage without demand and the result was as we expected. The number of plastic straws used was really reduced after the awareness studies. Our next goal will be to ensure that plastic straws are never used. We took a step to remove plastic straws from our lives. What about you?

DO NOT USE unless you really have to use it.

If you have to use it, consider the alternative to plastic.

Take out the steel straw from the box,

USE,

WASH,

USE AGAIN …

With the Covid 19 outbreak, we regretfully observe the increase in the use of plastic straws. Hygiene is important, but ignoring the plastic problem may lead to different problems in the future.

Reduce plastic, extend the life of the earth.

(in this study, pet bottles were previosly used bottles and all of them are sent for recycling when the project is completed.)

Gamze Işık

Ted Ankara Middle School, Turkey