Plastic Unwrapped offers a vision for a future without plastic pollution

Press Office
Plastic bottles on a beach by Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

Research from the University will help school-children in Margate understand more about the problem of plastic pollution and what can be done about it.

The Plastic Unwrapped project will see almost 500 children from the town’s schools, including Christ Church and St. Peter-in-Thanet Church of England junior schools, attend a workshop organised by the School of Physical Sciences on Friday 16 November.

The Plastic Unwrapped project is being run in conjunction with Discovery Planet and funded by the Royal Society of Chemistry and aims not only to highlight problems associated with discarded plastic products but also to suggest solutions for the future.

The project has already seen a beach clean in Margate, which found 388 bottle caps, 154 shopping bags, 217 straws, 251 food packets and 600 pieces of unidentifiable plastic in just two days. In all, over 2200 pieces of plastic waste were collected from the beach.

Organiser Dr Vicky Mason, a lecturer in physics, said: ‘This event will provide an opportunity for everyone to find out how they can help reduce the terrible environmental impact of all this plastic. Our workshop will focus on the future of plastic materials by looking at some of the research being carried out here at the University.’

The workshops on 16 and 17 November will focus on the future of plastics and how science can help develop solutions. Previous workshops have considered Thanet’s problem with plastic pollution, investigated what it is about plastics that make it such an environmental issue and looked at how people can help by reducing, reusing and recycling more.

The Plastic Unwrapped public workshops on 17 November, which are free and open to all, take place at Margate’s Hall by the Sea at Dreamland, with sessions taking place on the hour every hour from 10.00-15.00.