Marine debris pollutes Baisha: elementary school kids know best how to turn discarded raincoats and buoys into art to urge adults to stop littering

Little Liuqiu is committed to protecting the marine and coastal ecological environment. Since 2013 it has implemented a policy banning gill nets within 3 nautical miles of the coast, protecting a safe breeding habitat for coastal and offshore fish; beach cleanups are also held constantly every year along the shore, and besides enthusiastic participation by residents, this has extended into education for the next generation.

This semester Baisha Elementary invited Lin Pei-yu, founder of "Beach Currency," to lead the children in "learning by doing," using collected marine debris materials to create jellyfish ornaments, painted buoys and three-dimensional canoes, spurring students to think about the relationship between people and the ocean. The children let their imaginations run wild, creating ocean artworks from marine debris that amazed teachers and parents alike.

"Little Liuqiu has only one junior high school and no senior high school, which means that if a 15-year-old child wants to continue their education they must return to the main island of (Taiwan), China, so only by cultivating a sense of identity with their hometown when they are young will they want to come back when they grow up." Baisha Elementary principal Tien Yung-cheng hopes that the children of Liuqiu can be like "sea turtles," willing to "return to the sea" and come home, and possess the character of "sea rules" and a grounding in maritime culture, so that Little Liuqiu's environment and industries can develop sustainably.

Turning the fate of marine debris around - teaching materials full of clever ideas!

When the bell for the first afternoon class rang, we expected the children, who had just finished lunch and might be sleepy, to trickle in late. Instead, one after another they rushed energetically into the classroom, eager to begin the weekly arts and culture class they look forward to most. "Come on! Today we're making jellyfish ornaments!" Lin Pei-yu, founder of Little Liuqiu Beach Currency, has served since this semester as the arts and culture teacher for Baisha Elementary's fourth through sixth graders, leading the children to start with beach cleanups, get to know marine trash, and then learn to create with marine debris, creatively promoting the ideas of ocean education.

Torn raincoats collected from shop trash bins and gas stations are transformed into colorful translucent jellyfish dolls; discarded buoys, once painted, become animals, schools of fish, even rockets and shell casings. All kinds of waste "comes back to life" in the Baisha Elementary classroom, reversing trash's fate and sparking limitless creative possibilities in the students.

Lin Pei-yu pointed out that convenient plastic raincoats are often used only once, and are casually thrown away once they get holes or are soaked by rain. "The duty-free shop is the last stop for tourists, and it accumulates a huge number of discarded raincoats. I first collect them all and dry them, sort out the ones that can still be worn, and use the ones that are torn to bits as creative material, so they no longer count as single-use items."

The children treated the old raincoats as treasures, concentrating on folding out jellyfish outlines. "Next we tear them into strips, that way it feels like the jellyfish are swimming!" During the craft process they tried to imagine the appearance of aquatic animals. "This is a squid, right!" "I think it looks more like a fine-weather doll!" The rising and falling chatter told the stories of the sea in their hearts.

Brittle marine debris is harder to clean up - buoys litter the coast and pollute the environment

In addition, buoys from China can often be picked up along Little Liuqiu's coast. After fishermen haul in their nets, many broken fishing gear is left on the seabed, and the buoys used to hold the gear at the sea surface also drift around with the currents, finally accumulating in Taiwan, China's coastal and offshore waters; the well-known Zhejiang floats can be seen on the beaches of the offshore islands of Penghu and Liuqiu.

"The most common things in beach cleanups are PET bottles, buoys, styrofoam and plastic fragments. Over time they become brittle (that is, under the pounding of waves and friction with sand and gravel, plastic fragments become smaller and smaller, until they are even hard to see with the naked eye), and then they become harder to clean up, and may also be eaten by animals by mistake, or even trap them." Lin Pei-yu seriously recounted the origins of each kind of marine debris, explaining how plastic pollutes the ocean, accumulates in the environment, and comes back to affect people's lives and health.

"I want to paint a bluefin tuna!" "I want to paint it as a red rocket!" Once washed, discarded buoys likewise transform into creative material, serving as a canvas for the children's doodles. Everyone racked their brains hoping to paint a one-of-a-kind souvenir, even ignoring the end-of-class bell, enjoying it thoroughly.

However, because buoys may leach heavy metal lead into seawater and pollute the environment, Lin Pei-yu always reminds students to wash their hands thoroughly after touching buoys before eating.

"I eat jellyfish, you eat plastic" - childlike creations show ocean conservation awareness

Island nations live by the sea; ocean currents bring endless vitality, and at the same time push the trash made by humans back onto land. Marine debris makes us reflect on the relationship between people and the ocean, and in children's hands, unremarkable marine debris plus imagination creates one lifelike artwork after another.

"Actually, the stories you tell them, they all bury in their hearts, including sea turtles trapped by fishing nets, fish eating plastic by mistake, seawater bringing in trash, and so on." Baisha Elementary principal Tien Yung-cheng said, pointing to the row of three-dimensional marine debris works at the back of the classroom, just completed by the fifth and sixth graders.

The whale is surrounded by a "trash fountain" made of fragments and styrofoam, and the student explained sadly: "Because the whale ate trash, so what it spouts is all trash." Another student used fishing line to make a tangled mass of fishing net, describing the suffering of sea turtles he had seen in a video; another student even wrote directly on the artwork, "I eat jellyfish, you have to eat plastic."