THE children at Callington Primary School are extremely keen to do their part to help save the planet and were delighted when they received a visit from the co-founder of Plastics Ocean Foundation on Wednesday, June 12.

The pupils already enthusiastically wash out single use plastic from their packed lunches after their dinner and recycle this and as a school, have worked hard to achieve the ‘Eco-schools Bronze Award’ and the ‘Primary Science Quality Mark’ through their environmental work.

To develop the children’s passion for the environment further, the school were very lucky to welcome Jo Ruxton to deliver an assembly to the whole school about the problems we all face regarding plastic and our oceans.

Jo is the co-founder of the Plastics Oceans Foundation (www.plasticoceans.uk) and believes passionately in educating young people in conservation. Following a long and distinguished career in the BBC, where she worked as the lead member of the Natural History Unit’s diving team — directing underwater sequences in award-winning series such as ‘Blue Planet’.

She decided to leave to work independently so that she could tell the story of the oceans as they really are. She worked for eight years on her film ‘A Plastic Ocean’, which has been released around the world in 60 countries and in 15 languages and was described by Sir David Attenborough as ‘one of the most important films of our time’.

Jo believes passionately in educating young people in conservation. After speaking to the children, Jo visited the school’s large fish sculpture, made out of bamboo, willow and wire, which represents how plastic harms and destroys our oceans.

Throughout the day, each class came and visited the fish to fill it with waste plastic.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the day learning about how they can be the solution, not the pollution.