Please help us to make our planet a better place by putting an end to waste!

Each year, consumers in the UK use an average of 227,000 miles of wrapping paper, with over 83km2 of this ending up in our bins. On top of this, two million turkeys, five million Christmas puddings, and 74 million mince pies are disposed of while still edible, causing almost 270,000 tons of food waste during this widely celebrated holiday. We cannot sustain this.

This year, we need to come together to tackle the huge amount of waste we produce at Christmas. Families can create new ways of being sustainable around the Christmas period. Because of the current global pandemic, we are unable to meet up in large groups, so we do not need to buy as much food and wrap as many presents as we usually do. And, if large households do not have guests staying, they do not need to heat rooms of the house that are left unused.

On Friday Dec 18, 2020, members of the Cambridge Schools Eco Council will be meet at iconic sites around Cambridge in socially distanced groups of six to sit-in with placards and signs. There were be no chants or speeches, only kids sitting down with placards to remind the world of the important climate crisis. We discouraged supporters from joining us as we wish everyone to be safe in these uncertain times. Instead, we would recommended striking from the safety of their own homes by sharing pictures with a Christmas message about climate change. 

As this strange year draws to an end and we would like our community to know how proud we are of them. When faced with a pandemic we have done incredible things purely for the wellbeing of those around us. We have stayed in doors when we would have liked to have gone outside, managed to keep our hands clean and wear masks to do our bit in stopping the virus, and stayed in touch with our neighbours to make sure they’re OK. We have given money, time and energy so we can make it through together. We have treated this crisis like a crisis.

This is why it disheartens us that we are still failing to stand up to the climate crisis. While we welcome the UK government’s efforts, it is looking very unlikely that the Ten Point Plan will succeed in its aim to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The plan ignores the biodiversity crisis and relies too heavily on new technologies, which engineers and scientists warn are unlikely to save the planet. We know we can tackle a crisis, as we have so well demonstrated in past weeks, but only when communities and individuals come together and do their bit.

We strike to make our voices heard, to fight for the planet, and for the survival of humanity.

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For more info check the following article: Cambridge school eco-strikers close out 2020 with plea to end waste