I had quite a good turnout for my first plastic pollution event so was hoping for an even better one this time, unfortunately the weather was against me.
For six days prior to my second event, I made sure that I posted on all of our social media sites everyday, with a different picture each time. I wanted to make sure as many people knew about my event as possible. There was a lot of post sharing, liking, re-tweeting and favouriting, which I was really pleased about.
On the day of my event the weather wasn’t great, better than it had been but still grey and drizzly.
I set up my display, strandline, new reduced plastic picnic, and beach plastic collage, and waited….
There was a steady stream of people in and out for most of the day, which was better than I expected, many of which I could hear gasping and exclaiming at how shocking and sad some of my plastic facts were.
‘On average there are 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square mile of ocean’
‘Litter has been found in some of the deepest parts of the ocean, over 2000 metres down!’
‘90% of the worlds Fulmar (type of seabird) population have been found to have plastic in them.’
I liked my second design for the beach plastic collage better than the first. The happy blenny was good but when the bits of plastic were glued on it was difficult to tell what it was. The starfish was a much simpler and clearer design.
I even had some help finishing it off from Jack, a trainee with the Devon Wildlife Trust.
I think overall, both of my events combined reached a number of visitors that I am proud of, and that I hope will eventually make a difference, even if only a tiny one.
Changing how people see plastic and use plastic is difficult as its such an everyday item, but I hope that I managed to get one person to change, other than myself. 🙂
