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Environmental Education in Zanzibar: Videos, Marine Pollution and Beach Cleanup
Summary
Researchers showed schoolkids in Zanzibar a short educational video about ocean plastic pollution, then measured whether it changed their attitudes and their effort during an actual beach cleanup. The video did improve kids' attitudes toward the environment, especially among boys, but it didn't make them work harder at picking up trash—likely because the cleanup turned into a fun competition on its own. This matters because ocean plastic breaks down into microplastics that end up in seafood and drinking water, so finding ways to build lasting environmental habits in kids—even through something as simple as a short film—could help reduce this pollution over the long run.
This study investigated the impacts of an environmental education (EE) movie on children’s attitudes and behaviour with respect to marine plastic waste on Pemba Island (Zanzibar, Tanzania). Primary school students were randomly assigned to a Movie-First or Play-First group, thereby exposed to different orderings of three activities: watching the EE movie, responding to an environmental attitudes survey, and participating in a beach cleanup. The balanced design showed that the EE intervention had an overall positive influence on students’ environmental attitudes. Boys generally exhibited lower environmental attitudes than girls, but were more likely to show positive change across surveys, to some extent in response to EE. Contrary to expectations, EE did not impact students’ effort exerted in beach cleanups, likely due to spillovers in an event that became competitive. Nevertheless, the findings are encouraging because they show that a simple EE movie can have tangible outcomes, at least in the short-term.