Action Post 3

Hi! Just a quick recap for those of you that haven’t read my action plan, I am going to be coming up with one things I can change in my day to day life to help the environment each week!  Originally, I was going to be logging everything I do into a public Instagram account (@tinylittlechanges)  so that I can share this positive change with others. However, that didn’t seem to be working out to well, because, as it turns out, it is much harder to raise awareness on Instagram than I thought. Because of this, I started looking for new ways to encourage people to join me in making their change. I received a comment a while back saying that I should try to raise awareness at school or in person, but I wasn’t sure how I would go about doing that.

So I decided to implement some skills I already had in order to creatively solve the problem. I made a TikTok about the negative effects of plastic water bottles, and encouraged people to use reusable bottles instead. My video was seen by 600 people, and I am very proud to have gotten the message out. For those of you that don’t already know, TikTok is a social media platform where you can share videos that are 15 seconds long. It is mainly used for comedic purposes, however, creators can decide to post whatever they wish. People discover videos through the foryou page, where videos are lined up vertically, allowing viewers to scroll through for as long as they want. My video got on the foryou page, which is why so many people saw it.

This is the video I posted:

Reusable water bottle video

It was hard to fit all the information I had on the topic into the video, so I decided to write it in point form to make it simple and easy to read. In the caption, I invited people to change their habits and use reusable water bottles instead. The TikTok account that I have created for this project has the same name as the Instagram account (@tinylittlechanges). If you have TikTok and are interested, I encourage you to check it out!

Another thing I have done is decided to pack waste free lunches. I will track what I pack each day for the following week, and I will let you guys know what challenges I face and how it impacted me. I have decided to do this because:

•  According to https://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/6-reasons-to-pack-a-waste-free-school-lunch-0, the average kid produces 67 pounds of lunch waste a year. By choosing to pack waste free lunches, I am no longer producing so much waste.
• In my last post, I learnt about all the negative effects for plastic bags. The same thing applies to zip lock bags, which I have been using in my lunch for a long time now.

The reasons I used in my last post for eliminating plastic bags were that they….

• Are light weight and easily carried by the wind into oceans or forests
• Clog drainage channels (and could even cause flods)
• Never decompose
• Break into microplastics we can’t see, that end up in our food and are bad for our health
• Are harmful to any animal that may accidently eat one
• Require the burning of fossil fuels in order to be made (contributing to the climate crisis)

The next thing I will be doing will be making videos about the two other actions I have taken to help the environment (not using plastic bags and composting), as well as coming up with another thing I can change in my day to day life in order to help the environment. I have decided to do 4 action posts instead of three, because I feel that my action is not quite complete, and I would like to continue share my action.

Thank you for reading my post!