We believe that educating public about plastic pollution and environmental justice would benefit our environment in the long run. To raise awareness on environmental pollution, we organized a beach cleanup activity not only to pick up plastic waste and general wastes in the beach, but also teach students about types of microplastic, how to collect and count the number of different types of microplastics. The collected data were sent to the Big Microplastic Survey, a global citizen science research project which gathers essential data about distribution of microplastics and mesoplastics on coastlines. Besides, we organized sharing sessions to primary school students in the youth center in order to reach a wider and more diverse audience. Students from different local primary schools shared different perspectives which enriched the discussion. We strive to engage school students to have hands-on learning outside the school classroom to help protect the environment and contribute data to science research. Such learning helps students to build confidence in thinking of new solutions and motivating to act.
In April 2025, we organized a beach cleanup in Wu Kai Sha beach, with over 70 students joining the event to collect waste items and perform microplastics collection in line with the Big Microplastic Survey guidelines. There were 7 research teams and 5 waste collection teams. Each team was led by iGEM team students. To make the experience more rewarding, we conducted Pre-field trip and identified waste items on the beach in order to make a guideline to teach students the type of plastic items that can be recycled. We also asked students to record the number and types of collected items. The information will be useful for comparison with future beach cleanup activities.
In May, our team visited The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups Felix Wong Youth S.P.O.T. and gave a sharing session to primary school students. We started off by welcoming the kids who ranged from all primary year levels and introducing our team. Then, we did a pre-survey to understand how kids of various ages perceived topics such as biosensors, artificial intelligence, and environmental justice. The ultimate goal of the sharing session was to educate younger students about environmental issues and what our team is doing this year to make an effort into resolving these issues.
It is challenging to deliver abstract concepts like biosensors and artificial intelligence in our project to primary school students. Thus, we used two innovative elements, build a BioBrick game and interactive video to convey the core idea.
The research team explaining what biosensors were, and the basic structure of a BioBrick circuit (Promoter 🡪 RBS 🡪 CDS 🡪 Terminator) that was simplified into different shapes, we let the kids have a go at re-arranging the different parts to see if they remembered the sequence of a basic BioBrick circuit, which gave them a deeper understanding of how the BioBrick circuit functioned as well as providing an interactive activity which grabbed the attention of kids at such a young age. Students were actively participated in the game and all groups were successfully locate the BioBrick circuit sequences. Afterwards, our human practice team played a short video, which illustrated how microplastics contaminated things around us such as food, and elaborated on how serious plastic pollution is, and the way it is affecting marine life and endangering species. Then, we introduced them the ways we could reduce plastic consumption in our daily lives, such as following the 3Rs principal, as well as what schemes the government has imposed to cut down plastic production as well as implementing proper waste treatment.
Another interactive part of this sharing session was the choice-driven video which let the audience make choices on things such as what packaging to choose and how to dispose of plastic waste, with each choice, they create a unique story and ending to the video, effectively demonstrating environmental justice as well as how to cut down on plastic usage.
We aim to transform students’ understanding about plastic pollution from a simple issue of waste management to a complex issue of social equity and corporate responsibility and help them to develop empathy and global citizenship, therefore, we integrated the concept of environmental justice in the video content.
Environmental justice is a social movement that addresses injustice on poor or marginalized communities where they’re harmed by hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not benefit. In other words, it’s a movement that fights to ensure that everyone - regardless of race, geography, or income - has fair access to a healthy environment. Justice is often absent from circular economy discussions. Regarding marine plastics, the distribution of impacts of marine plastics is unequal, because communities have different relationships with the ocean. During 2018, the amount of plastic waste China accepted reduced by 99%, Most of that waste has since been redirected to other south-east Asian countries, who do not have the capacity to handle such massive amounts of plastic waste. Therefore, we hope the advocation of environmental justices would raise awareness among students of the injustice behind the unequal burden of climate impact that marginalized communities experience and take responsibility for the environmental impact of our own actions.
