'Climate Strike' is Word of the Year
Talking of single use, Dutch brewing company Heineken has today announced that it will be replacing single use plastic can toppers used on its mult...
Plastic has only been in production for a little over 100 years, but the scary thing about it is that it doesn't rot away naturally. That means that all the plastic ever made is still somewhere on our planet's surface, whether on the land, in the ground or in our rivers, lakes and oceans.
Ash reaches first key milestone on Yangtze trek
After setting off in late August, Ash has completed the first 550 miles and has arrived at his first city - Yushu, situated in Qin...
Bags for life increase plastic waste and other stories
However, some of the additional weight of plastic also comes from 'food to go', like the sandwiches, cakes, crisps and fruit bought at lunch times....
Ban proposed on single use plastics
Cotton buds are becoming an increasing hazard in our oceans, as they are often flushed down the loo after use and end up being washed out to sea. ...
Banned: single use plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds
It's a good start on tackling our reliance on throwaway plastics - which have amounted to 4.7 billion straws and 316 million stirrers per year in E...
Conservation Education 30 - The Problem with Plastic
No matter where you look these days, you're likely to spot something made of plastic. It can be shaped in all kinds of ways, it can be really thin...
EU backs ban on single use plastics
The ban doesn't have legal force yet. Member states still have to back the directive before it can become law, but with voting so overwhelmingly i...
England ponders cash incentive for plastic bottle recycling
Mr Gove said., “We must protect our oceans and marine life from plastic waste if we are to be the first generation to leave our environment in a be...
England's shops start charging for carrier bags.
This new rule means that England is now in line with the rest of the United Kingdom. Plastic bag use has dropped considerably in Scotland, Wales a...
France bans plastic cups, plates and cutlery
Pack2Go Europe, an organisation representing European packaging manufacturers has urged the European Commission to take action against France for b...
Freaky Friday Facts about plastic
Eleven top plastic facts 1. 16,000 plastic bottles are made in the world EVERY SECOND! 2. 500 billion plastic bottles are made in the world E...
Government announces plans for plastic bottle charge
In the UK alone, we use about 13 billion plastic bottles per year and well under half of these are currently recycled. So if a deposit return sche...
Holiday of a Lifetime! (The Great Pacific Garbage Patch)
A film about the Great Pacific Garbage patch, made by students from Huish Episcopi Academy with help from the team at Explorium. This is the first...
Home Learning Activity: Make your own bioplastic
Here's a quick and easy recipe for making your own biodegradable plastic from natural materials (bioplastic). Adult required to help!
Home Learning Activity: Making a vertical garden
A great way of maximising limited garden space or creating a garden using a blank patch of outdoor wall is to use recycled plastic bottles to creat...
Home Learning Activity: Milk bottle elephants
Instructions for making beautiful elephants from plastic milk bottles.
Home Learning Pack: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle
Packed with great ideas for reducing your impacts and activities to help you recycle and re-use things, including making recycled paper, a recycled...
Introducing Better Planet Schools
Better Planet Schools is an online environmental education programme, created by the Young People's Trust for the Environment to engage children an...
List of Talks
The school talks service is available in person for schools within a 30-mile radius of our office in Yeovil OR on Zoom, Teams etc. for schools anyw...
Making a hanging bottle garden
In this great 'How-To' guide, Georgina shows how to make a hanging garden using plastic bottles. Created in collaboration with Explorium, Lights O...
Making a milk bottle elephant
Join George as he shows you how to make a milk bottle elephant. Created in collaboration with Explorium, Lights On® Jam.
Making bioplastic with Noah
Noah had a go at making some bioplastic. Find out how he got on in this video that he produced for YPTE, created in collaboration with Explorium, L...
New 25 year green plan announced by PM
Much of her speech to launch the plan concentrated on the issue of plastic pollution, which has come into much greater focus in recent months. The...
Oceans of plastic
The new findings were released at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual meeting. The amount of plastic reaching the oce...
Our winners' 2,000 Words: now available for you to read!
The idea for the competition came from Jemma and Amy, two of YPTE's Young Trustees. They were certain that the competition would appeal to a lot o...
Paddleboarding environmentalist highlights plastic pollution in England's waterways
If we used a time machine to fast forward ourselves 500 years into the future, what would the archeologists of the future be finding out about us? ...
Petrol from air: the future of sustainable transport?
The petrol they can produce is purer than the product refined from oil and it can be used in an ordinary car engine. This means that our existing ...
Plastic Pollution
This downloadable zipped folder contains a suite of lesson plans, for Key Stage 2 and above. The lesson plans look at the problems caused by plast...
Plastic Pollution Assembly
Presentation and presenter notes for an assembly on the topic of plastic pollution.
Plastic bag charge may double
Speaking in Kenya yesterday, Mrs May said “I want to leave a greener, healthier environment for future generations, but with plastic in the sea sti...
Plastic found in fish in the River Thames
The study was limited and only looked at two fish species - common flounder and smelt, which were caught around Erith and the Isle of Sheppey. The...
Plastic found in tap water
New research published by Orb Media has revealed that 83% of tap water samples, taken from various sites around the world, were contaminated with m...
Research launched into impacts of microplastics on human health
The levels of microplastic found were roughly double that found in tap water by a previous study. Bottles tested originated from the US, Mexico, B...
Scientists accidentally create enzyme that eats plastic
While tweaking the enzyme to find out how it had evolved, the scientists found that the changes they had made enabled the enzyme to break down PET ...
Scottish shoppers use 80% fewer plastic bags
A charge of 5p per bag has been charged by shops in Scotland since 20 October 2014 and in that time, stores have handed out 650 million fewer bags ...
Single-use is 2018's word of the year
2018 has been a year for campaigning against single-use plastics, with the EU planning to bring in a ban on single-use plastics from 2021 and with ...
Study reveals last remaining ocean wilderness
These last wilderness areas are characterised by very high levels of biodiversity. They are largely free from disturbance caused by human activiti...
Supermarkets announce new green initiatives
Waitrose has announced that it will stop using disposable coffee cups in its stores by this autumn. From then on, members of its MyWaitrose loyalt...
The plastic-coated island where nobody lives
Yet Henderson Island, the largest of four islands in the Pitcairn Island group, has a human population of zero! Almost 18 tonnes of plastic, broke...
UK MPs call for ban on microplastics
Huge numbers of tiny pieces of plastic are building up in our oceans, lakes and estuaries. Microbeads are very small pieces of plastic, which are ...
UK bans more single use plastic
However, the ban only applies to takeaways. It does not have any impact on single use items provided by supermarkets or shops. Whilst the ban is ...
UK rejects ban on charge for disposable coffee cups
Taking its inspiration from hugely successful 5p charge introduced on plastic carrier bags in England in October 2015, a charge on disposable cups...
Video on food chains
Arthur explains food chains and why removing keystone species like turtles can make a big difference to a marine ecosystem. Created in collaborati...
Waitrose stops selling kids' magazines with plastic toys
Over the next eight weeks, magazines with 'pointless plastic' on their covers will be removed from the supermarket's shelves. The ban will not app...
Why Plastic's Not So Fantastic
Short film on plastic, its uses, its history and why it is now presenting us with such a major environmental problem. Presented by YPTE Director Pe...
Young explorer completes trek down the Yangtze River
When he was 24, Ash traversed the 1,500-mile length of Mongolia, with 18 stone survival trailer, solo and unsupported, in just 78 days. Then at 26...