Ryan Faaren is a Grade 5 environmentalist. He was spurred into action after seeing a video of a turtle having a straw removed from its nose.
First, he did a school project where he was horrified to learn about the environmental impact of half-a-billion straws used in the United States daily.
“That’s enough to fill 127 school buses each day full of straws going straight into our landfills and waterways,” says Faaren.
Then, with the help of his parents, Ryan started an online petition to get the City of Kingston to ban plastic straws. It’s been little over a week and the petition already has more than 400 signatures. The goal is 500.
The city says they are just in the early stages of looking into the issue. Kingston’s environment director, Paul MacLatchy says they are seeing if banning straws is the best route, or if taking a different approach could solve the problem.
“Right now in Kingston it’s not accepted by our residential recycling stream, but if it could be that would a reasonable way to manage it.”
Even though public pressure is growing to ban single use plastics, the city says it may take some time before any bylaws can be put into place.
Ryan’s parents say they are proud of their son for taking on the initiative and will be with him every step of the way.
Greg Faaren, Ryan’s father says, “The main part of the project for us was making sure that he understands that even though he’s one voice, one voice can be strong and it’s a matter of trying things and not giving up because it’s difficult.”
Ryan adds that he hopes his petition will motivate more kids to speak up about environmental problems.
“I still think our environment matters because if we don’t care about our environment we won’t have nice green grass to play on.”