WasteLess: A vanguard for Sea Change

The published science related to the plastic problem changed quite a lot between 2015 and 2020, and it was clear that the main problem is not plastic bags, straws or baby bottles. It’s the fact that huge amounts of plastic end up in our water bodies and over time, because of factors like sunlight, wind, and waves, the plastic breaks into millions of tiny pieces, known as microplastics. Chemicals that end up in the sea stick to these tiny pieces of plastic. In a process called biofouling, sea algae covers the microplastic, and fish cannot tell the difference between microplastic and plankton because they look and smell the same. Small fish eat the microplastic. Big fish eat the small fish, and it goes in a cycle and ends up on our plate. Microplastics are now everywhere on our planet. They’ve been found in our drinking water, air, fruits, vegetables, blood and even in breast milk.

Doing our homework

By 2018 when WasteLess launched kNOw PLASTICS, an educational programme about unsafe plastic and reducing the use of single-use plastic, we already knew that plastics from inland sources were flowing through rivers and ending up in the ocean. We then discovered that children seemed to respond much more strongly and emotionally to plastic pollution in the ocean compared to plastic pollution on land. This led to us wanting to create an educational programme that focused on marine plastic pollution.

We started by interviewing some of the leading experts in the field of marine plastic pollution. We pored over the latest peer-reviewed scientific publications and conducted a very thorough literature review. Key concepts from interview transcripts and publications were tracked on colour coded post-it notes. “It was Maya’s brilliant idea to do a frequency count as part of a conceptual analysis to establish the number of times a word or phrase appeared on the post-its. We also did a relational analysis by examining the relationship between the most common key words from the frequency count,” explains (WasteLess co-founder) Chandrah. The frequency count showed that the top keywords were ‘microplastic’, then ‘ingestion’, ‘biomimicry’, ‘biomagnification’ and ‘bioaccumulation’. These results pointed to a unique way of framing and centering the entire Sea Change curriculum around the microplastic cycle.

Co-designing with teachers and students

The next phase of curriculum development is always highly interactive. “The process of co-designed learning is really exciting for us,” says (WasteLess co-founder) Ribhu, “With our previous curricula, we were really able to make use of the wonderful diversity we have in Auroville to create innovative educational materials. We liked to sit at the back of the classroom to see which parts of the lessons were working and which weren’t working. There was such rich feedback when we pilot tested ideas and wove in student and teacher input. When you do that with four to five schools, you really see trends. Later, when you scale a programme up to, let’s say, 5,000 schools, you know that those ideas are likely to translate, even far away from Auroville.”

Because this was our first programme specially designed for low-income government school students, we really needed to understand our target group. “We always have these focus group discussions with students and teachers before we start designing the lesson plans. That’s just as important as the content. Just like putting two pieces of velcro together, we want to stick new science onto whatever knowledge or experience students aged 10-13 years already have,” Chandrah explains.

At the end of 2020, as pandemic lockdown restrictions were easing, we began speaking to teachers. “Dinagar had just started with us, and it was a godsend to have someone who had also grown up in Auroville, whose first language is Tamil and who has a close connection to Tamil culture as well,” recalls Ribhu. “We asked the teachers all sorts of things. How did they like to teach? What did students enjoy? What were students’ favourite sea animals?”

When it became possible, we had interviews with our target students from coastal and inland communities. Here again we asked what they already knew and felt about plastic pollution, about water bodies, and we asked how these were connected to their day-to-day lives. “Through group discussions, we found that kids already knew about the water cycle from their science classes, and so framing Sea Change as a microplastic cycle made total sense,” says Ribhu.

Dinagar sensed that kids who lived inland somehow had an even greater emotional connection to the ocean and water bodies than kids close to the coast. And all the children felt strongly about fresh air and wanting to keep the water clean. Many girls said that they didn’t swim, but they loved the sensation of their feet sinking into wet sand at the edge of the water at a beach. “We wanted a way to recreate the emotions and sensations that the children feel in connection to water bodies and the sea, how they connect to these spaces and how they value these spaces. This was inspired by some of our research into decolonising science education, developing learning materials specifically for the global south and a creative Awareness Through the Body workshop with Aloka,” says Ribhu.

We took beautiful pictures at the sea and at a lake. In the curriculum, we use these images to tap into an almost universal emotional connection to water. The first lesson starts with what the kids love about these spaces. Then we show pictures with plastics in the water, we talk about how these spaces are being polluted with plastic, and we tie in the science.

Who needs textbooks?

In 2018, WasteLess had been able to integrate aspects of Garbology and kNOw PLASTICS into Tamil Nadu State Syllabus textbooks. These books are rewritten once every ten years and reach millions of students every year. “This would be our dream for Sea Change. We would love to integrate this latest cutting edge science into textbooks,” says Chandrah with a sparkle of excitement in her eyes. With this in mind, the team had to ensure that the curriculum was built on a solid scientific foundation and that it was delivered in a way that would remain relevant for years to come.

“Everything we’d designed before, modelled on Auroville or private Indian schools, was dependent on teachers reading four or five pages to prepare before class,” says Ribhu, “That’s what we wanted to follow with Sea Change. So we pitched an accompanying book for teachers to the National Geographic Society.” Dinagar recalls. “We had examples of textbooks in Tamil, some of the best textbooks from other countries, all with different designs.” Chandrah continues, “We asked the teachers about font sizes and types, illustrations and pictures, icons, colours, all sorts of technical questions.”

But a number of the teachers said they didn’t like books and they didn’t really prepare for class. “Here we were, designing a book for government school teachers, but they weren’t going to read it!” says Ribhu with a big smile, “So we asked them what they would like, and they said big visuals, not much text, and written in a way that did not need much preparation.” Manas was mentoring WasteLess in learning design, and he inspired the team to switch from a book to a learning board. We ended up with a large calendar-like teaching aid which was co-designed with teachers to make sure it was something they would want to use.

“The first version of Sea Change also used quite a lot of Tamil text to explain the science. Students had difficulty understanding this formal written language as they think and speak in colloquial Tamil. Working with senior educators in the State Council of Educational Research and Training, we decided to try putting the written theory into colloquial Tamil, using a humorous WhatsApp style conversation (because that’s what the teachers could understand) between a smart student starfish and a wise teacher sea turtle,” says Dinagar, who worked through countless translation and proofreading rounds. All of the science is delivered through a playful conversation between these two sea characters rather than the teacher reciting a long monologue. And it is illustrated as a sort of colourful comic strip so that kids can also follow along visually.

The main science for each lesson is again highlighted in short, engaging educational films made in collaboration with independent filmmakers. The student book includes fun activities to do at home. Clearly, as Dinagar notes, “We really wanted to make learning fun and experiential so that the students could engage more creatively and emotionally with the latest science and, of course, have conversations about this at home.”

Unleashing innovation in Tamil Nadu

The programme was launched by the Tamil Nadu Education Minister in Trichy in late October. Training sessions have been held in Trichy, Rajapalayam and Auroville for 195 government school teachers, and the curriculum is currently being offered at 200 schools in Trichy, Virudhunagar and Villupuram, benefiting 10,000 students. They are the first students in the world to learn about the microplastic cycle in such a comprehensive curriculum.

Once the students finish the seven-lesson programme, a Sea Change celebration is held in each school. This is inspired by the annual open-house events that WasteLess team members experienced when they attended Auroville schools as children. “This flips the tables. Students become the teachers and educate their teachers, parents and other students with the latest cutting edge science on marine plastic pollution,” explains Chandrah.

In tandem with the rollout, WasteLess is conducting a Randomised Control Trial to investigate the impact of Sea Change on student attitude, knowledge, beliefs, and behaviour towards plastic. “Monitoring and evaluation allows us to develop and improve our educational materials and further proves the benefit of scaling these programmes,” says Mukta, who leads this part of the project.

A gift for the next generation

WasteLess has just received funding to translate the programme into Hindi to promote it in other states. We are already seeking partnerships within India around the Ganges river basin, home to over 400 million residents. But another 6% of funds (about US$7,000) is needed to advocate that this science education should reach even wider audiences.

Current plans also include publication of a White Paper on the innovations and impact of this programme. “This will hopefully help us to form partnerships with NGOs and governments, and eventually help with textbook integration,” says Chandrah.

“The funding partnership with the National Geographic Society has been a dream. They are so dedicated to science and exploration that helps to illuminate and protect the wonders of the world. They have been such a massive support to make this dream a reality,” continues Ribhu. He hopes to leverage their powerful network to help scale this curriculum as widely as possible as microplastic pollution is a global challenge that needs to be addressed on a global scale.

“This is our very best work. It feels like a gift from Auroville to the world,” says Ribhu, the beautifully crafted materials spread out on the table in front of him.

The young Auroville team is fully dedicated to bridging the gap between the latest science and how a child sees the world and interacts with it. We are convinced that children-powered educational programmes can pave the path for a wasteless world. “Imagine a world where waste no longer exists. An inexhaustible world that is incapable of being used up,” says Chandrah, with passion and hope in her voice.