Two sisters from Arnold have spoken out about five ways people can reduce the amount of plastic they use to help save the environment.
Ella Meek, 16, and Amy Meek, 18, are the founders of the award winning charity Kids Against Plastic.
They were also both honoured at the Pride of Britain awards in November as Environmental Champions and have also written a book ‘Be Plastic Clever'.
“Our focus on saving the environment is focused on plastic but a lot of environmental issues are all interviewed so when you do reduce the plastic you use, you’re saving the environment in more than one way," said Ella, who is still in school while Amy has taken a gap year.
“Being aware of the plastic you use instead of just cutting plastic out which is really hard. Small steps make a big impact. It's easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to plastic pollution and climate change but doing something is better than doing nothing and that's why we're encouraging people."
The charity Kids Against Plastic is part of the ScottishPower's COP26 Green Power List.
The sisters have collected over 97,000 pieces of single-use plastic since 2016 in their efforts to fight against climate change.
The five steps the sisters are urging people to take are to swap plastics out for reusable materials (such as using a reusable coffee mug), start room by room of what can be replaced (like swapping a plastic toothbrush to a bamboo one), raise awareness (like retweeting something on Twitter or sharing a post, to do your research and not be too hard on yourself, it’s about being conscious and not cutting plastic out completely.
“We’ve developed these initiatives for businesses, cafes and schools especially to get involved in," said Amy..
"Consumer behaviour can change the way businesses think and we've seen a change in that since we started.
"The scale of the plastic pollution is bigger than people think a truck worth of plastic goes into the ocean every minute which is scary and there are micro-plastics found in things we use everyday like tap water and the things we eat.”
In 2018, it was announced that schools were being urged to stop using single-use plastic items and consider environmentally-friendly alternatives by 2022.
Amy added that judging people who aren't plastic conscious isn't what their activism is about and said: "We're always really conscious of our messaging so we're not going to not talk to someone if they're using a plastic bottle rather than a reusable one, we don't have that approach, every small thing does make a big difference and we've seen a change in that since we started doing this work, we don't underestimate the impact."
In April, the pair have a new book that will be released under DK publishers called: ‘Be Climate Clever’ - which will be aimed at children to help them grow up as. The book includes interviews with climate change activists such as Dominique Palmer.
The girls are also touring schools to get them to educate and reduce the amount of plastic used too with more information on how to get involved here: https://www.kidsagainstplastic.co.uk/do/be-plastic-clever/
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