Students from Beatrice Strong Public School stopped by council Tuesday night to encourage Port Hope council to ban single-use plastics in the municipality.

Oliver Harwood and Abbigael Spencer represented their Grade 5/6 class, arguing that not only do the plastics have a short duration of use, but they are often found littered in town ditches and along highways.

“Right now, at this point, recycling plastic is…the most effective means of avoiding this waste all around the world,” Harwood said.

In their presentation, they gave examples of single-use plastics including cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers, balloons, food containers, beverage cups, cigarette butts, plastic bags, packets and wrappers, wet wipes and sanitary items.

While the students didn’t mention steps the federal government has taken to reduce single-use plastics, they believe more can be done by everyone and which is why they approached the municipality to propose a local ban.

“In our day-to-day lives, this will help reduce pollution and demand for plastic production that’s contributing to global climate change,” Spencer said. 

Spencer said her class partnered with the Circular Economy Ambassador Program (CEAP) Mind Your Plastic initiative and undertook a local cleanup around their school area.

“During the cleanup we sorted and counted all the plastic items and we noticed many items were mostly thrown into our natural areas including forests, creeks and fisheries,” Spencer remarked.

The students also turned the tables and put councillors through a pop quiz on how long single use plastic items take to decompose. In most cases, the answer is hundreds of years.

“We believe there’s some serious action that needs to take place in order to reduce plastic waste and plastic pollution in Port Hope,” Harwood said. “Port Hope needs your help in taking a stand to ban single use plastics or at least most single use plastics that are found all over the place.”

Mayor Olena Hankivsky thanked the students for their presentation, describing it was “so well done and so informative.” 

Coun. Chris Collins asked the students if the roles were reversed and they were sitting in a council seat asking the community to ban all single plastics but the majority of residents preferred not to at this time, would they still pass a motion to do so?

“Myself, personally, I would say 'yes' because the community may think it’s bad, but the earth thinks it’s worse,” Harwood responded, which drew applause from the gallery.

Coun. Adam Pearson also thanked the students for their presentation and got up to shake their hands after offering his comments. 

“It takes a lot of guts to get up in front of us and all these people here to make that presentation,” he said. “I would like to make a promise to you that I will do my best in the future to change my habits, to use less plastic.”  

Coun. Vicky Mink said she heard of interesting projects happening at Beatrice Strong. Harwood said a program was organized by a custodian at the school in response to students throwing recyclables in the garbage.

“We have a few kids every month who signed up for this recycling team kind of thing and they go around the school and take all the garbage cans and all the recycling things and then they actually sort through it all for a little bit of the day,” he said, adding “they get to skip class too which is a win-win.”

Councillor Claire Holloway-Wadhwani introduced a motion - referencing that single-use plastics are a contributor to carbon emissions, pollution and litter in the community and as Port Hope has already declared a climate emergency is undertaking the development of a community Climate Action Plan with leadership from an Environmental Advisor Committee - that “be it resolved that the committee be directed to report back to council with recommendations for a single-use plastics bylaw for inclusion in our community Climate Action Plan.” The motion was seconded by Coun. Les Andrews and passed unanimously.

“This is the future of Port Hope,” Mayor Hankivsky said. “Let’s give them another round of applause.”

Listen to an interview here with Beatrice Strong Grade 5/6 teacher Paige Harris: