Liceo Internazionale Europeo "Altiero Spinelli" of Torino

Before throwing it away...think! Let's all try to be good models.
Class IA of the Liceo Internazionale Europeo "Altiero Spinelli" of Torino took part in the European contest "Eur-oceans Script Contest" and produced the video "The message".
The video was presented in Brussels: the protagonist... a plastic bottle!

The theme of the Eur-oceans contest was "The impact of climate change and human activities on marine ecosystems".
We thus started to study the growing problem of water pollution - especially in the oceans - caused by our actions.

The issues analyzed have been many, from global warming to overfishing, but what really shocked our class was discovering - thanks to "Algalita Marine Research Foundation" - that most of the plastic is accumulating in the Pacific Oceans with disastrous consequences for marine ecosystems. The albatross, for example, is confusing bottle tops with food and is therefore dying from suffocation and hunger ingesting but not digesting the plastic.

So we decided to express our dismay by creating this video with the help of a young director and schoolmate, Paolo Bertino and other students.
We chose a plastic bottle to play the leading role with a message: "from a little plastic bottle one can really change the world".

Our class also thought of some practical solutions to try to rectify plastic problem by suggesting to for example a) reduce - or even better - stop producing plastic, and b) recycle rather than discard.
Perhaps the most important lesson we have learnt is that we - the future generation - can really help improve our world by being first of all good role models.
Workshop: "Want to re-love your plastic bags?"
Wanting first of all to be good models we cleaned up the school grounds and recycled all the trash collected.
Then we did a workshop making bags from recycled plastic - using a method suggested on a blog.
By fusing together various pieces of plastic with an iron and then sewing them we made shoppers, wallets, pencil-cases, purses, envelopes etc...

All this to demonstrate that if we - barely 14 year olds - have understood how to improve our world - why don’t you do it too? It’s simple - try!
Field trip to the Genova Aquarium to understand marine ecosystems better
Our project finished - momentarily - at the Genova Aquarium where we handed in the film script and video - all in a plastic envelope.
Before going to the aquarium we researched marine flora and fauna and each one of us gave a little presentation on the animals that live in the sea, like dolphins and jellyfish.

Even though we were fascinated by the marine world, we realized the grave risks the flora and fauna are facing. Furthermore we should have a lot of respect for the animals in aquariums as they are the ambassadors for the conservation of marine ecosystems.