Overview

This activity is all about the journey that plastic can take. You will need to think about what could happen to a plastic bottle after its been purchased. Use your imagination to come up with some creative story-telling and either create a story board or a digital map. For the story-board, there are two versions. One has suggested captions with some word gaps to complete. The other is blank to let your imagination roam free. Choose the one that is most appropriate for you or your child.

Activity steps

1. Start by creating a story board showing the journey of a plastic bottle. Print or draw out the story board template to help you. You can use these notes to make a digital map later if you would like to. It might have the following scenes.
2. In the first section of your storyboard template, think about where a bottle might be purchased and sketch a picture or find a photo and stick it on.
3. Then draw the bottle of water or fizzy drink being consumed. Where might this happen and how long after it was bought?
4. The third section should show how the bottle is disposed of. There is a choice here, and we hope that as well as reducing your use of plastic, you dispose of it properly too. However, let us assume for this activity that someone is careless and throws it on the side of the road.
5. Then where might it go? Could it be blown towards a beach? Are there rivers nearby that could carry it out to sea? Use two sections to show the journey towards the sea.
6. For the last section, think about what might happen to the bottle in the ocean. If you would like to extend this activity, think about where ocean currents could end up taking the bottle.
7. We’d love to hear your story about a plastic bottle – will you share it with us? Maybe you could take a picture or a screengrab of your storyboard, or even record a video telling us what happens…. If you do, please remember to tag us @commonseas and use the hashtag #SeaChampions. Thank you!

Activity materials

• Pencil
• Colouring pen(cil)s
• Laptop or computer with internet access (for digital mapping only)

The UK alone uses 13 billion plastic bottles ever year. From this total, only 7.5 billion are destined to be recycled. The remaining 5.5 billion either go to landfill, are incinerated (burnt), or littered.

Much of this unmanaged plastic waste can make its way to our ocean carried by the wind and rivers. Once there, plastic is broken down into smaller fragments, made brittle by UV light from the sun and broken up by wave action to form microplastics. Problem solved? No. These microplastics, although small, have the potential to stay in the ocean for hundreds of years. Estimates place the number of microplastic particles in the ocean’s surface waters between 15 and 51 trillion and a recent study found 1.9 million pieces covering just one square meter of seafloor.

Evidence of the scale of plastic waste can be seen in the ocean gyres. Gyres are circulating ocean currents. The currents collect and trap pollutants, which has led to the creation of 'The Great Pacific Garbage Patch' - a floating soup of debris destined to stay in the ocean for many years. There are five principal gyres in our ocean with one of the biggest, the North Pacific Gyre, recorded as being approximately twice the size of France!

You may be inspired to find out more about what happens to plastic once it enters the ocean. To find out more about the harm that plastic can cause to marine life, try the Plastic threats activity.

You can also find out more about how plastics can be transported by ocean currents far from where it originally entered the sea, through the story of Moby Duck.