Mississauga School On a Mission to Save Aquatic Life By Capturing Microplastics in Ocean

Students at Mississauga’s St. Thomas More school have developed a device that can be used to go out into the ocean and collect plastic waste with, which is then recycled and repurposed into bricks. They were/are motivated by aiming to help protect sea turtles from microplastics.

Their design won second place in GreenLearning’s Canada-wide Eco 360 challenge. The students thought the perfect way to reuse the plastic was to turn it into toys! The students hope the plastics that could be captured could help the LEGO ® company achieve their goals to use sustainable materials. The students also advocated for the banning of single-use plastics from their school and shared what they learned with their school, friends, and family.

“My class was very excited to enter this competition. They were proud of their accomplishments and actually asked me to contact the LEGO ® company to give them our prototype. I thought this challenge was a great incentive to encourage student learning. The class had fun creating their invention.”, said Tanya McCallion, Teacher at St.Thomas More School.

“It is evident that the students at St.Thomas More School care deeply for the environment and want to foster positive change. They used out of the box thinking to create a design to help reduce plastic waste found in the ocean. It is always so exciting to see youth use their creativity to find solutions to global problems. I can’t wait to see what this group of students does next!”, said GreenLearning’s Program Director, Kristina Johnston.

Eco 360 challenge allows learners to imagine a world without waste by closing the loop of a product’s life cycle and creating a circular economy. Learners explore the origin of plastics, their use in our daily lives, how they end up in the environment as waste and how we can ensure that plastics are cycled back into the economy after their use and out of the environment to realize their full potential, while protecting our planet. Eco 360 challenges learners to engage in creating a circular economy by exploring innovative solutions for reducing, reusing, and recycling plastic waste