Rainbow Schools challenged to beat plastic pollution

Rainbow District School Board is challenging staff and students to ban plastics and go litterless for Pollution Prevention Week from Monday, September 17th to Friday, September 21st, 2018.

Pollution Prevention Week provides the ideal opportunity for Rainbow Schools to emphasize and highlight sustainability activities and achievements, expand pollution prevention efforts and commit to new actions.

Throughout the week, the goal is to avoid the use of all plastic and single-use materials in lunches, classroom activities and lesson plans.

This Go Green initiative is part of the Environmental Committee’s ongoing efforts to build an understanding about the plastic pollution crisis globally.

“Plastic pollution is a defining environmental challenge of our time,” says Director of Education Norm Blaseg. “To help combat this, it is important to be aware of the way we produce, use and manage anything made of plastic.”

He adds: “Our participation in Pollution Prevention Week is another means of encouraging school communities to continue to adopt sustainable practices, both inside and outside of the classroom.”

In the next 10 to 15 years, global plastic production is projected to nearly double. Each year, over 500 billion plastic bags are used, some 13 million tons of plastic leak into the ocean, and 17 million barrels of oil are used for plastic production.

There are ways to reduce the use of plastics to benefit the environment, such as limiting or reducing single-use containers, phasing out microplastics, and addressing the economic reliance on plastic materials at the production level.

Rainbow District School Board’s Environmental Committee issues monthly challenges to staff and students throughout the school year.

What will next month’s challenge be?

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Media Contact:

Nicole Charette, Senior Advisor,
Corporate Communications and Strategic Planning,
Rainbow District School Board, 705-674-3171, ext. 7217.