Litter Superheroes Let’s talk rubbish! Litter basketball Ask two to four pupils to come out to the front or one pupil from each class. Task for pupils is to throw waste into the bin. Hopefully quite a few pupils will miss the bin, so you will have litter on the floor. Set the scene Think about your local park, street or school grounds and the litter that has been dropped on the ground by the people walking around.

What is litter and why is it my problem anyway? Encourage the children to suggest definitions. What is the difference between litter and rubbish? Litter is defined as ‘rubbish such as paper, cans, and bottles left lying in an open or public place.’ Oxford Dictionaries More than two million pieces of litter are dropped in the UK every day (Symphony Environmental Study 2005) The estimated cost to the taxpayers for street cleaning stands in excess of £1 billion a year. Dropping litter is illegal. People who drop litter can be fined or face prosecution in court. Authorised officers have the power to issue a fixed penalty charge of up to £80 for a litter offence, as an alternative to prosecution. If the offender is prosecuted and convicted in court, the fine could rise to £2,500.

Where would you rather be? Why? Ask, have the children experienced litter problems like this in their day to day lives? Where? How does it make them feel? What would they say to someone who was thinking of dropping their litter? Our nation has turned in to a mass of litterbugs; 62% of people in England drop litter, although only 28% will admit to it.  Weather and animals can also contribute to the problem and this is worth considering when you look at litter problems in your school grounds. What do you think might be a potential cause for the litter in the second picture?

How long, on average, do you think these materials take to biodegrade? To biodegrade is to be decomposed by bacteria or other living organisms If time allows, consider using this clip from BBC Bitesize to explore further: https://www.bbc.co.uk/education/clips/z268p39

Any type of litter takes a long time to disappear naturally, so whatever the material the right thing to do is not to drop it in the first place.  Of course, these timescales are only approximate and will vary depending on the conditions where the litter is dropped Are there any surprises here? Consider the timescales in terms of the children’s experiences. For example, if they dropped a banana skin in the park at the start of Year 2, it might be still there when they join Year 4!

Who is responsible? Why is litter a problem? WWhat can WE do? hat can WE do? Who is responsible? Why is litter a problem? YOUR school CAN make a difference: Run a community litter pick Join Keep Britain Tidy and participate in their events Join the Marine Conservation Society and help them keep our beaches clean Become an Eco-School and focus on litter Contact your local council for more bins Create posters asking your local community to be more mindful Complete a litter audit in your local area and then campaign for the main perpetrators to help address the problem Make your own Litter Superhero film to raise awareness of the problem and ultimately change behaviour

Litter, such as cigarette butts, plastic bags and other plastics, harms animal and marine life in a variety of ways such as water pollution, when these items are mistaken for food and when creatures get caught up in plastics and get strangled. It is estimated that every year over 1 million seabirds and 100,000 turtles and sea mammals die of litter related causes.  Over 373,000 pieces of litter were found on beaches in the UK in 2006 - equivalent to 1,989 items per kilometre - the Marine Conservation Society reports a 90 per cent increase in beach litter since 2004.

Each year Bristol Waste Company, the city’s waste and recycling contractor, collects 3,700 tonnes of litter from Bristol’s streets. Yet 74% of people in Bristol still think litter is a problem in the city. In November 2016, Mayor Marvin Rees, in partnership with Bristol Waste Company, launched the Clean Streets campaign in a bid to make Bristol measurably cleaner by 2020. The three year initiative asks individuals, community groups, schools and businesses to take collective responsibility for keeping the streets clean and tidy, and encourages everyone to reuse, repair and recycle more.