Did you know that plastic caps are among the top five most harmful ocean trash items? Marine mammals, birds and fish often see plastic bottle caps as food, with potentially fatal consequences.
Continuing on with our environment work, Year 4 have been researching the effects of plastic in the oceans.
Using some of the data below, the children will be creating graphs and charts to record these findings.
During a recent beach clean, 10,004 bottle caps were collected from the Dutch North Sea coastline.
- more than 80% came from beverage and food packaging
- the most common bottle cap colours that were found were blue and white (common colours for bottled water packaging)
- 80% of the bottle caps had no branding visible
- more than 70% were damaged, ranging from slight to severe damage, indicating that the bottle caps had been floating at sea for a long time
In addition to this, we are creating a large piece of artwork using only plastic bottle tops. The children have been asked to collect tops in various colours and add them to the display on a daily basis.
Below are some images of our creation in the early stages.
