Microplastics Outreach Program: A Systems-Thinking Approach To Teach High School Students about the Chemistry and Impacts of Plastics

We describe the implementation and outcomes of an outreach program that spanned three class periods for high school students in Advanced Placement Environmental Science or Chemistry. The outreach activities described herein encompass environmental chemistry, sustainable chemistry, polymer chemistry, materials science, ocean ecology, and computational chemistry. Peer instruction and process-oriented guided inquiry-based learning are used to guide student learning. Through these active learning approaches, students learn the differences in chemical structures of common plastics and how these differences define which plastics readily break down into microplastics in the ocean. A systems thinking approach is used to place the chemistry of plastics into the context of sustainability initiatives, ocean impacts, and the utility of plastic in our everyday lives. Students were given the choice of a laboratory report or a service-learning assignment as a summative assessment. Results of formative assessments, including responses to peer instruction questions, are presented, and considerations for other institutions that may be interested in implementing this material in their courses are discussed.