By NICOLE VALICEK
STUDENTS from St Mary’s Primary School in Williamstown will get an important lesson in plastics and the environment during a screening of an award-winning documentary.
The school will host a screening that is open to the public of the new, award-winning environmental documentary ‘Bag It’ at the Williamstown Mechanics Institute on Thursday 29 August.
Bag It follows everyman Jeb Berrier as he tries to make sense of our dependence on plastic bags.
Although his quest starts out small, Jeb soon learns that the problem extends past landfills to oceans, rivers and ultimately human health.
Australians dump 36,700 tonnes of plastic bags into our landfill every year. That equates to 4,000 bags a minute or 230,000 per hour and only 10 per cent of Australians take their plastic bags for recycling.
This single-use mentality has led to the formation of a floating island of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean more than twice the size of Texas.
The film explores these issues and identifies how our daily reliance on plastic threatens not only waterways and marine life, but human health, too. Two of the most common plastic additives are endocrine disruptors, which have been shown to link to cancer, diabetes, autism, attention deficit disorder, obesity and infertility.
The screening at the Mechanics Institute is part of St Mary’s ‘assertive action’ initiative as part of the Aussi Vic Resource Smart program to encourage school and wider community to engage in knowing about and participate in more sustainable living practices.
The schools Science and Mathematics Co-ordinator and Co-ordinator of Sustainability and special projects Nicole Sadler said this was a non-for-profit initiative.
“St Mary’s will be installing and soft plastics big from ‘red’ recycling on their premises to encourage school community members to recycle instead of dispose of soft plastics like shopping bags,” she said.
Three session of the film will air on Thursday 29 August at 2pm, 3.45pm and 5pm. Suggested gold coin donation.
