This activity shows how to make step by step your own plastic bird feeder. Win-win for you and the environment.

Activity steps

1. Prepare your work space by clearing your desk and laying newspaper down and get all of your materials out.
2. Wash the bottle out with water.
3. Measure about 10cm up the bottle and draw a small circle. It needs to be about the same size as the handle of your wooden spoon.
4. On the opposite side draw a larger circle, about the size of a big coin. The bottoms of the circles need to be at the same height.
5. Squeeze the bottle together and carefully cut the circle out. Do not try to poke a hole in the bottle.
6. Put the wooden spoons into the bottles. The big end of the spoon needs to go snugly in the big hole.
7. Put the lid on the bottle.
8. Use string to make a loop so you can hang the bird-feeder.
9. In a tray at home, fill the bottle with seeds. The tray will stop the seeds making a mess.

• Medium 500ml plastic drink bottle
• 2 wooden spoons
• String (30cm)
• Ruler
• Marker pen
• Scissors
• Tray
• Bird seed

Time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of plastic as a material and evaluate your product:

1. Who would want to use it?
2. Why is plastic good for this?
3. What is good about your product?
4. What could you to do make your product better?
5. Why is it important to reuse plastic?

Marine plastics context

Almost 300 million metric tons of plastics are produced worldwide annually. This is equivalent to the entire biomass of all adults in the world.

From all the discarded plastic, around 8 million metric tonnes end up in our oceans, making plastic the greatest component of marine litter. Wind and light help degrade this plastic debris over time, transforming it into microplastics. These fragments smaller than 5mm are everywhere in the global ocean. Plastic debris affect wildlife as it causes entanglement, ingestion and habitat alteration. Fish, crustaceans and other animals ingest microplastics, which reduces their energy intake and body mass, while having adverse health outcomes. This has also major implications for humans, from healthcare to economic activity.

So, in the long term we need to change how we relate to plastic through the 6 Rs: reduce, remove, re-design, re-use, recycle and recovery of energy.

This activity is just one idea of how you can contribute to re-using plastic and reducing the impact it has on the environment.