Tain Pupils make a Drama out of Waste
Lunchtimes at Tain Royal Academy are full of drama – and the drama is full of rubbish. Pupils in the lunchtime drama group, run by teacher and writer Peter Whitely, are tackling the subjects of waste and consumption in a play titled “Pieces of String too Short to be Useful”.
The aim of the piece is to get secondary school audiences thinking about the connections between the things they consume, the waste they produce and the effect this has on landfill and on climate change.
In a series of short sketches, pupils look at typical consumer items – a mobile phone, a Tshirt, hair products – and examine why we always want more, better, newer replacements.
Peter Whitely explained “How many of our choices are truly individual, and how much are we all influenced by fashion and advertising? Under the guise of “decluttering” we can end up throwing out items which are perfectly all right, filling up landfill sites and adding to our carbon footprint in the process.”
The play is supported by RoWAN who plan to take this play on a mini-tour of the Highlands, reaching teenagers and challenging them to break free of the pressures of fashion and consumerism. Cutting waste has a crucial part to play in cutting our environmental impact.
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Big-up to Mr W! I was a pupil
Big-up to Mr W! I was a pupil at TRA (too many moons ago now) and took part in some of the Mean Green Clean-up Scheme activties. I believe that influencing the way we think when we are younger helps us to make better choices when we are older. I have grown up to think about where my waste is going and recycle where-ever I can. We are still a long way from an ideal situation where only a tiny fraction goes to landfill but as time goes by and attitudes are changed we will meet that target. Living in the Highlands of Scotland, it can be easy to forget how the population is growing and lose sight of the fact that we are producing more and more waste. We are lucky enough to live in a part of the world that is both technologically advanced yet unspoilt by overcrowding and heavy industry. We have it all and we should all consider how lucky that makes us and fight to protect that. Every can, bottle and rubbishy tabloid paper that goes into a recycling bin instead of landfill is another tree saved. Let's not turn into America. Let's not consume outwith our environment's means. Look after your things, make them last and live a smug life, knowing that you are part of the solution not a creator of the problem. Good luck, I hope you all have fun doing the play. From A tree-Hugging Eco-Warrior in Tain
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