With more than 200 students wanting to get involved in healing the planet, the choice came down to a select few from the Turning Point School. The Level 8 Community Leadership team, along with advisor Mr. Matt Kline, will be visiting Dana Point’s renowned Ocean Institute on February 27th, for an intensive three-day Plastic Ocean Pollution Solutions (POPS) Leadership Summit.
They will join 90 youth leaders from all over the U.S, as far afield as the Caribbean, India, and Africa. Each team won a place at the Summit based on their innovative ideas on how best to monitor and publicize ocean plastic trash, and also reduce this non-biodegradable waste.
The Algalita POPS Youth Summit offers students a chance to learn about current scientific research on plastic pollution, share their action projects with their peers, and work directly with mentors to help improve their projects’ next steps. The students on the Turning Point team – Vanessa P., Ben P., Tyler A., and Madison C. – were selected from a pool of 209 applicants. They will be showcasing a project idea that they came up with in class: to make the school community less wasteful by eliminating the need for plastic water bottles. Their goal is to not only raise awareness about the effects of plastic production, but open people’s eyes to the truly simple solution to this ongoing problem.
With plastic production set to quadruple by 2050 (260 million tons were produced in 2008), and 85 percent of ocean trash being plastic, it’s going to be all hands on deck to deal with the coming deluge. Turning Point is proud to have a team of dynamic students who will become part of the solution to this growing problem.
Turning Point’s Level 8 Community Leadership team prepares to join nearly 100 other youth leaders from around the world for the POPS Leadership Summit. Clockwise from top left: Tyler A., Mr. Matt Kline (advisor), Ben P., Vanessa P., and Madison C.
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