The Young Voices of the Future: We must save our Environment !!!

An interesting and refreshingly positive aspect of the Canal Clear ups has been the young peoples workshops which have concluded the days clean up work on both the canal and the towpath. The group who took part on Wednesday 21st July were tasked with thinking about where they lived and the places they played with their friends and to then consider some of the environmental issues at these places and to come up with their own plans and ideas for keeping these special places #tidycleangreen. I was really privileged to hear about all the locations the youngsters went to and were important to them, from the Roman Park in Tamfourhill, the places with the special named stones in Rowen Crescent and the skatepark in Falkirk. The group who were aged 8 -11 years old worked in groups of three or four and here is a taste of their ideas and creations for improving and keeping their special places #tidycleangreen, so don’t be surprised to see some of these projects becoming a reality and actually happening over the coming months.

A Group want to make up songs and jingles and these could be played on the radio

Roses are red, violets are blue if you drop litter that could hurt you

A group worked on designing their own bins for the park

My favourite idea was making up games, these could be board games, or they could be games painted onto the ground or computer games played on a laptop or phone, we had dancing games, get the rubbish through the basket ball hoop to win points and the rubbish hopscotch game. How about a game of parkour where you have to jump and gather litter as you go around the course and obstacles: that sounds like a future Olympic sport.

Poster competitions were a popular idea and that is certainly a project that I would like to encourage and support, some of the suggested statements were :

There is no excuse for Littering ,

remember to; reduce, reuse and recycle,

Keep this world happy so don’t drop litter,

Here are some thoughts and ideas that big business might be advised to pay attention too: our young eco campaigners might be coming to a factory near you to request that you only use: Reusable plastics, governments might want to consider having special days when no plastics can be used anywhere in the country , more and bigger fines are required for those who drop litter and indeed also for companies that continue to produce and use single use plastics.

Finally one group want to organise their own litter pick for the Roman Park in Tamfourhill and that’s definitely something I can get organised very quickly , now I just need some crazy poster ideas and I wonder who I could ask to design me some groovy cool posters ?