It's time to get 'picky' and keep asking ... why?

‘That man’s got the best job in the world’ … said Theron, a Young Climate Warrior from London.  What do you think is the best job in the world?  Well, Theron was talking about a man who was picking up litter … helping to save our planet by looking after our natural world.  You may, or may not, think that litter picking is the best job in the world … but taking action to protect our planet is super important!

Your challenge this week is to go on a litter hunt. Take an empty bin bag with you to the park or playground and see if you can find at least 5 sneaky items of litter that haven’t made it into the bin. Check with your parent/carer first, wear gloves if you have them, leave anything that looks sharp or dangerous and tell a grown up, and make sure you wash your hands when you get home. When you’ve found those cheeky pieces of litter, RECYCLE what you can! (Have you joined in with Ali’s 2 Million pick-up campaign? Check out all the plastic that has already been rescued from our countryside and towns)

Quick note! ‘REFUSING’ (like saying ‘no’ to plastic straws), ‘REDUCING’ (like choosing the packaging-free option) and ‘REUSING’ (like storing things in glass jars) are really important ways of helping our planet – reducing the amount we consume and waste.  ‘RECYCLING’ is also part of the solution. Glass, aluminium and copper can all be recycled indefinitely – in other words, they can be recycled over and over again! So they are brilliant things to recycle. Learn how GLASS is recycled and how CANS are recycled.

What about ‘COPPER’? Have you heard of the ‘Great Cable Challenge’? If every primary school pupil in England recycled just one cable, we could save over 20,000 kg of copper from going to waste! Copper is vital for our transport, clean energy, lifesaving medical equipment, our phones and our green future.

But why do we actually recycle … what do you think? FIRSTLY to save raw materials: we don’t need to mine for new materials if we can recycle ones we’ve already got – this saves lots of energy and reduces the burning of fossil fuels. SECONDLY to save all that energy used to make the item: saving all those factories from needing to create ‘new’ items saves energy. Have you guessed the THIRD reason? Recycling products saves them from going to landfill - being buried in the ground with other rubbish. Landfill sites are a key source of methane emissions. Methane is a really powerful gas – over 100 years its impact on climate change is around 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

When you have completed this challenge don't forget to email us, along with a photo of your bag of litter, to Kate at hello@youngclimatewarriors.org.