Plastic pollution is an issue that affects us all and we believe that everyone can be part of the solution!
Participate in the Changemakers Project to help us reduce plastic pollution and get the chance to join the Save the Med expedition team in their quest to study and protect Mediterranean marine wildlife.
What is it all about?
Save the Med is inviting students to be part of a positive wave of change in the world of marine regeneration. This year the Changemakers Project will have three main parts to it.
1. The Changemakers Project
We invite students from Mallorca, aged 15 - 18, to form teams and develop ideas that can help reduce plastic consumption. By implementing their projects students will help ignite a wave of change in their communities, and in May they will submit their projects to Save the Med Foundation. Scroll down to find out more about the type of project we're looking for and download the informational leaflet to learn more and participate.
2. The Changemakers Exhibit
An event where all teams can come together! Students from all over the island will get together to present their projects to the public and discuss solutions to plastic pollution. Students will have a chance to view each other's projects, network, learn from each other, inspire and be inspired. Our team will view the projects and make a final decision before announcing the team which will join us for an expedition onboard the Toftevaag!
3. Changemakers At Sea
The team with the most impactful project, evaluated by a panel of scientists and educators, will be announced during the Changemakers Exhibit and rewarded with an unforgettable expedition experience in July. For one week, students will help our scientists study marine life and human activities at sea, all the while gaining knowledge and skills to become true Ocean Ambassadors when they return.
Students in Mallorca ages 15-18 and their teachers can submit a project to Save the Med.
Our event, the Changemakers Exhibit is open to everyone: teachers, students, the school community and the general public.
The team with the most impactful project will be rewarded an expedition.
Note that no matter who you are, you can join our expeditions as a volunteer in accordance to the conditions specified on our Expedition page.
The objective of you project will be to REDUCE THE USE of single-use plastic. We are looking for creative solutions and ideas based on the three most important Rs:
There are no limits to how you can achieve this but we encourage you to consider the interest and talents of your team members, and think of creative ways of how you can apply them to develop a fun, creative and inspiring project! Scroll down to see some of the participating teams and projects from previous years.
We have created an extension pack for students to carry out their projects at home.
We have had some fantastic projects over the years! Here are a few examples of teams who really understood the challenge and whose projects have resulted in a significant reduction of plastic use in their schools and communities.
This team of young women put forward an incredible effort to help raise awareness about the issue of plastic pollution - involving their entire school in a true wave of change.
The amount of passion and creativity they put into the project really impressed us, and their enthusiasm for saving the oceans was evident even from afar. In order to help raise awareness abut plastic pollution they made a mini documentary about the threats that the oceans are facing and organised a school debate about plastics, involving students from the years above and below, as well as teachers. They also put together a number of beach cleans, removing plastic from beaches and using the collected trash to create an amazing piece of artwork - this made it onto our boat and stayed with us for the whole season!
It doesn't end here, they created videos and Instagram accounts to involve the public and created their own logo and t-shirts, which they sold to fundraise for Save the Med. If anything they did too many things! This can be a disadvantage as it might take away from the quality of the project - but in this case the girls from Lokahi Makai pulled it off, and did everything to really high standards. We weren't sure where the girls got all their energy! When we invited them onto our ship, they put all this energy into helping collect data on-board and learnt as much as they could about marine science.
The best part: the team didn't stop once they were off the boat. The first thing they did was make an amazing movie of their experience on-board. They continued spreading their "plastic-free" message to younger students and promoted reusable products during school fairs, acting as true Changemakers and Ocean Ambassadors, and creating a reduction of plastic pollution in their school. One of the students even completed an internship at Save the Med last summer!
Our 2019 Changemaker team really understood the objective of the project: reducing plastic pollution!
They started a student club named Bio-Bellver, that meets once per week after school hours and discusses environmental issues and how they can change them. Through the club, the members managed to involve their whole school in plastic reduction projects and replace single use plastic cups with reusable cups in their school cantina, reducing the use of 11,500 small plastic bottles in their school lunch hall per year!
To top things off the team invited students of all ages to join the club and together they have participated in school fairs and sold small cactus plants (plastic-free!) to fundraise for Save the Med. This team joined us on-board the Toftevaag and helped us study microplastic pollution in the Mediterranean. When on-board, they had to brave a challenging week at sea, with high winds and rough weather! They came out of it amazingly and after only a few days, they were jumping in the ocean with us, swimming expertly to salvage pieces of floating plastic and bring it safely on-board.
Since their participation in the Changemakers project, the Club has continued to take action, including organizing zero-waste workshops, holding presentations at community events and in companies. The catering firm was so impressed by their efforts to reduce plastic bottles that the have expressed a wish to present the same idea to the other 12 schools that they work with.
This team of students had a brilliant idea: "Almuerzos sin plastico" (Plastic-free lunch).
They identified a problem in their school related to the amount of single-use plastic packaging that students were using for their school lunches. To understand the problem, they made a survey and spoke to fellow students.
The team realised that many of their peers were carrying their lunches in disposable plastic bags, so they created an alternative! Their idea was to create handmade cotton bags for student lunches. The reusable bags are an amazing example of the type of solutions we are looking for in this competition.
The team's idea was then to create a competition in their school and give out these bags to the winning students. This team was very close to making it onto the boat! Although the idea was on point, we didn't see an effort in presentation and in follow through of the project, and there was no final estimate of how much plastic was reduced.
This team of students put together a wonderful, creative project. The effort and passion they put into their work was truly impressive. Wai Kai created some artistic and inspirational videos about the problem of plastic pollution - our favourite was this one.
They created a game about plastic pollution, teaching younger students that plastic on the beach is not normal. They used their school's social media account to help raise awareness and gathered all this information in a beautiful online platform, which you can view here.
They were very close to getting first place, but lost some points as their project didn't directly include any reduction of single-use plastic.
