Plastic Free July 2025
01 July 2025 - 31 July 2025
Region(s): Nationwide
Type(s): national Events
Join millions of people around the globe reducing their plastic waste.
Plastic Free July is a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution – so we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities. Will you be part of Plastic Free July by choosing to refuse single-use plastics?
Celebrate in July by:
Taking the Plastic free schools challenge
taking the pesky plastics quiz
arrange a plastic free morning tea
take part in the Choose to UP Cup campaign
and look out for local events, such as workshops in your area, see the interactive map. Check to see if your local council is running anything.
For further information: www.plasticfreejuly.org.
Everyone has a role to play
World-renowned conservationist and primatologist Dame Jane Goodall suggests how we can all help to make a better world.
Select here to view video transcript and copyright information.
Follow on Social media with #PlasticFreeNZ and #ChooseToRefuse
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PlasticFreeJuly
Facebook: https://facebook.com/plasticfreejuly
Instagram: www.instagram.com/plasticfreejuly
Related content
Use the resource Thinking about plastic – planning pathways, which includes our interactive planning pathway, to begin a cross-curricular look at plastics.
New Zealand science organisations Royal Society Te Apārangi and the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor have created reports and resources to help us rethink plastic, this includes a timeline of plastic innovations and impacts. In December 2019, the findings were released in a report titled Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand.
This article curates a wide range of Science Learning Hub resources for primary teachers related to recycling and biodegradability in the Material World strand of the New Zealand Curriculum.
Find out about the Ocean Plastic Simulator – an interactive computer tool that shows where virtual plastic is likely to end up when it is dropped in the ocean.
Citizen science
Discover how teacher Dianne Christenson used the online citizen science project The Plastic Tide to help develop students’ science capabilities in a unit on sustainability in this case study and unit plan.
Bring some citizen science into the classroom with these local projects: Litter Intelligence, Backyard Battle and Mizuiku Upstream Battle or the international project Litterati.
Activity ideas
Use Dianne’s unit plan as inspiration for a focus on sustainability.
Use these activities with your students to further investigate litter and the impact it has on our environment:
Useful links
See the Royal Society Te Apārangi website for the report Plastics in the Environment and other resources.
Visit the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor website for information about Plastics and the environment and the Rethinking plastics report.
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