Resources
Key Vocabulary for Students
- Circular Economy: in a circular economy, products are designed in a way that makes it easy for them to be reused and repaired. When a product reaches the end of their cycle, they can be taken apart and made into new products.
- Coastal Communities: small villages and towns located near the sea and ocean are coastal communities. Many people who live there have jobs that rely on sea related activities. For example, tourist attractions, resort hotel operators, fishers, and scuba divers rely on the sea.
- Derelict Fishing Gear: fishing equipment that is lost or discarded in the ocean is derelict fishing gear. Large and small items from fishing companies or individual fishers are left in the ocean. Fishing gear can be lines, buoys, rope, nets, pots, traps, and floats are examples.
- Ecosystem: all of the plants and animals living in an area and their interactions with their physical environment
- International Environmental Dumping: the practice of taking waste from one country and shipping it to another.
- Fossil Fuels: materials that are made from ancient plants, animals, other living things. Petroleum, coal, and natural gases are examples.
- Ghostfishing: when derelict fishing gear is left in the ocean, marine animals get trapped in the nets and traps.
- Global Climate Change: the long-term changes in temperature and weather patterns
- Global Warming: the rise of global temperatures due to the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
- Great Pacific Garbage Patch: a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean
- Greenhouse Gases: gases in the atmosphere that trap heat from the sun. Water vapor, cabon dioxide, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons are examples.
- Incineration: disposing waste by burning it to ashes
- Leakage: waste that is not properly managed and leaks into the environment
- Littering: garbage left that ends up in the ground, lakes, or ocean: plastic bottles, plastic bags, tins, wrappers, glass etc.
- Macroplastic: large plastic waste that ends up in the environment and slowly breaks down into small pieces.
- Marine Debris: litter that ends up in the ocean.
- Microplastic: tiny plastic particles that are smaller than 5 millimeters.
- Ocean Pollution: a combination of chemicals and trash, most of which comes from land sources and is washed or blown into the ocean.
- Plastic: a durable material that is made by people that can be molded into any shape
- Plastic Pollution: plastic left on the ground as litter often blows into creeks and rivers, and eventually ends up in the ocean.
- Polymer: large molecules that are made up of chains of small molecules
- Recycling, upcycling, and downcycling: taking waste materials and changing them into new objects; when materials are upcycled, they are recycled into higher quality of plastic, downcycled materials are recycled into lesser quality materials than the original product.
- Resin number: the number in the center of the recycling label that tells the type of plastic of the item.
- Single Use Plastic: plastic that is designed to be used once and then thrown away.
- Sustainability: protecting and conserving global ecosystems and natural environments
- Waste Management System: the collection, treatment, and disposal of waste material
- Waste Picker: a person who finds recycled materials thrown away by others to sell to recycling plants.
Trade Books for Students
- What a Waste: Trash, Recycling, and Protecting our Planet (Protect the Planet) written by Jess French
- Kids vs. Plastic: Ditch the straw and find the pollution solution to bottles, bags, and other single-use plastics written by Julie Beer
- One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia written by Miranda Paul
- This Class Can Save the Planet written by Stacy Tornio
- The Mess that We Made written by Michelle Lord
- Plastic Pollution A Variety Of Facts Children's Earth Sciences Book written by Bold Kids
- An Earth-Bot's Solution to Plastic Pollution written by Russell Ayto
- Trash Vortex: How Plastic Pollution Is Choking the World's Oceans written by Danielle Smith-Llera
- The Last Straw: Kids vs. Plastics written by Susan Hood
Reading Lists for Teachers
The Plasticology Project: The chilling reality of plastic pollution and what we can do about it written by Dr. Paul Harvey
Plastic Soup: An atlas of ocean pollution written by Michiel Roscam Abbing
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