by Raakhee Suryaprakash
· A teenager who started a non-profit to educate school kids
about their impact on the Ocean.
· A girl scout who wrote to CEOs and convinced a few of them
to change their companies’ single-use plastic policy.
·
A high-schooler who testified before California’s Natural
Resources Committee in support of AB 1884 – Straws Upon Request bill.
·
A young Californian who has had an impact of stopping the use
of about 20 million plastic straws and stirrers with her action.
·
Sagittarius schoolgirl who launched #NoStrawNovember in 2017
·
Founder, Jr Ocean Guardians, which along with Monterey Bay
Aquarium, co-sponsored SCR 139 – No Straw November with Senator Bill Monning.
·
A high school senior who raised $2,050 with
her Girls Scouts special edition patch for the Girl Scouts San Jacinto Council
in Houston, TX, for Hurricane Harvey relief.
Yes
to all of the above, but so much more. She is a beacon of hope that the next
generation has many concerned nature-lovers who will work to ensure that their
environment is cleaned up and stays clean.
Shelby
also demonstrates the scope of the impact of just one individual, as well as
the power of institutions like the Girl Scouts, the influence of “Young
Women in Science” programmes such as the one hosted by Monterey Bay Aquarium that she was
part of and above all the clout of a motivated teenager on social media.
At
a time, when mainstream media highlights the ignorance of the general public in
the US in being unable to point and name even one country on the map, we have
first world teenagers like Shelby O’Neil and Boyan Slat whose work have international impact.
With No Straw November hosted
by Shelby &Jr Ocean Guardians in Monterey, CA, she took her movement out of
the classrooms and challenged people and businesses to give up single-use
plastics for a month. By writing to company CEOs and influencers, Shelby
reminded people that to be truly sustainable stopping the use of single-use
plastics is essential. Her biggest wins from approaching company heads directly
by mail were companies such as Alaska Airlines, Farmer Brothers Coffee as well
as Dignity Health giving up the use of most or all their plastic straws and
stirrers. Her online #NoStrawNovember challenge saw cities, counties, schools,
restaurants, and everyday people participating and pledging to give up straws
for the month and keep track of how much they were offered and how often they
refused the ubiquitous plastic straw. In my opinion this was as much an
informal audit as it was a challenge to combat plastic use. But as Shelby put
it in her interview with me,
“It was
definitely a team #NoStrawNovember movement with people all over the world supporting
and spreading awareness, it is much bigger than one person.”
Preceding
2018’s Earth Day and World Environment Day themes calling to “End Plastic
Pollution” and “Beat Plastic Pollution” respectively, No Straw November’s
success in 2017 demonstrated that people and businesses were willing to go the
extra mile to help counter the plastic menace. Getting the No Straw November
Proclamation passed by the government of California paved the way for an
influential legislation that ensures that straws and stirrers are only provided
in restaurants on-demand and not as a matter of course.
A
high-school senior and a girl scout having an impact on state policy and
corporations shows what just one motivated person is capable of doing to change
the world for the better. Shelby credits her awareness of the issue of Ocean
Plastic to her two-year association with the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Young
Women in Science” programme. The right after school and extracurricular
activities and volunteering with committed institutions and individuals can
channel young people into change-makers extraordinaire.
The
school children she interacted with as part of Jr Ocean Guardians’ beach
clean-ups and awareness building programmes also showed her that they were
interested in doing something concrete to tackle the Ocean Plastic problem
beyond the classrooms and activity books.
Plastic
pollution an all-pervasive existential threat, that’s characteristic of the
over-consumerist, use-and-throw times we live in. De-plastic-ing and
Re-plastic-ing our lives is a continuous process that needs to start now, start
small and build up in a step by step process, and young change-makers like
Shelby O’Neil show us that even one person can have a massive effect on the
plastic problem.
When
asked about her plans for the future, this young change-maker who has already had
such a powerful influence on the world kept it simple,
“Right now, I'm a senior in high school so I'm really focused on
graduating and then going to a university!”
Here’s
wishing her all the best for her future and world-changing activities.
Read
the full interview of the first Re-Plastic Change-Maker at:
And follow her initiatives at:
Twitter:
@nostrawnovember
Instagram:
jr.ocean.guardians
www.jroceanguardians.org