“I’m optimistic after hanging out with these kids today.”
Those are the words of musician/eco-crusador Jack Johnson during the 2014 Plastic Ocean Pollution Solutions (POPS) Youth Leadership Summit organized by Algalita Marine Research and Education.
Ninety students – ranging form 11 to 18 years old – and hailing from the U.S., the Caribbean, India and Africa will gather in Long Beach, California on February 27th for the three-day intensive 2015 POPS Summit.
We’re honoured to be a POPS Product Partner by providing our much-loved stainless steel folding sporks in organic cotton pouches for attendees. They’re a great way to avoid disposable plastic cutlery – and one way to help the students with their trash-free lunches.
So why is this Summit happening? This is how the official Press Release introduces the issue:
“Latest research says 4.8 to 12.7 million tons of plastic makes its way from land into our oceans every year. Added to the recent first-ever accounting of total plastic floating in the world’s oceans – approximately 5.25 trillion pieces – and the situation seems dire. But as the tide of plastic trash rises, so does the real-time impetus to combat the problem.”
And these students are not arriving out of the blue with no knowledge of the issue.
They are fully aware of the severity of the ocean plastic situation. Each student submitted a detailed application to win a place at the Summit based on their innovative ideas on how best to monitor and publicize ocean plastic trash and also reduce this non-biodegradable waste.
At the Summit they will receive advanced training from experts in leadership, public speaking, community engagement, art, science, filmmaking. The students are grouped into creatively named teams – a couple of past examples include Team ROBODOX and Team Evergreen – that work together to develop and refine actionable plans to reduce plastic pollution.
A key presenter and force behind the Summit is Algalita Marine Research and Education Founder and Research Director, Captain Charles Moore. He is credited with being one of the first to bring attention to the problem of oceanic plastic pollution back in the 90s when he inadvertently discovered what has come to be known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. He describes his experiences in his book Plastic Ocean.
And this is how he describes the method and ripple effect of the Summit:
“We communicate the obvious meaning of the discoveries that we’ve made about the tremendous plastic load that the ocean bears. This message now is being marvellously translated into terms that can be easily understood by city councils, by some of the brightest kids in Southern California. But not only Southern California, from Nairobi, Kenya, from Hungary, from the Bahamas.”
In the words of Summit Program Director Katie Allen, “We give them the tools and the resources to be able to stand up for themselves and stand up for what they believe in.” This video showing highlights from the 2014 Summit illustrates just how they do that:
2014 POPS International Youth Summit from Algalita on Vimeo.
The beauty of this Summit is that it sparks action that continues into the future indefinitely. The team from Guam that attended in 2011 – Team Marine Mania – have been touring puppet shows called “Protect Your Watershed” and “Plastic Isn’t Fantastic” to schools in Guam for the past two years, reaching 2400 students.
Team Evergreen from Intellectual Virtues Academy in Long Beach, California created a Trash-Free Lunch Contest in May 2014. For five weeks they checked and scored student lunches for the disposable content, and waste-free winners were awarded a team ice cream party and a stainless steel water bottle each.
2014 attendees, Team Hungarian Green Ants, developed a week-long awareness aurriculum to teach fellow students in Hungary how to be the solution to plastic pollution. This included engaging their community in a clean-up event resulting in over nineteen bags of debris being removed from their local waterways.
The Summit is all about inspiring innovative youth action to create tangible lasting change.
In the video, Program Director Katie Allen makes the following observation based on her experience:
“A lot of the time I feel like the older people have actually given up. They in a way push it off on the younger generation.”
Look out jaded adults. A new generation of empowered youth are about to challenge you.
And they won’t take no for an answer.
They are determined to create positive change. We all can learn from them and follow their inspired lead.
