Plastic-up! A workshop for tomorrow’s generation

It is hard to imagine a world without plastic. Plastic is light and saves weight. It is cheap to produce, flexible, malleable and resistant. For medicine, plastic is irreplaceable. But what happens after its often short-lived use? Worldwide, about 20 million tons of plastic waste end up in rivers and oceans every year. Of all the plastic produced, only 9% is recycled. Even in Germany, only 1/3 of plastics are recycled, the vast majority incinerated. Yet waste could become a valuable raw material again, used for new products.

In this exciting workshop by the educational project Plastik-Up and Ndwenga e.V., you will learn about the UN Sustainable Development Goals in relation to climate justice and the huge plastic pollution problem that top-polluter Germany is driving. The first half will be an interactive analysis of plastic in the global context, with space for critique and discussion. The second half will be a presentation providing fundamental knowledge about different plastics, their advantages and disadvantages, their recycling and the circular economy system, followed by a recycling demonstration and subsequent discussion.