Technology is often one of the first answers to come up when we ask young people about issues that they face in nature today. A close second is often pollution or, more specifically, plastic pollution. Elena and Dora respond to these through these two important photo stories.

Keeping Nature 'Fresh' by Dora Kicsi

I wanted to highlight the issue of plastic and groceries, the issue of wrapping any vegetable or fruit in layers of plastic to display in stores and prolong shelf-life. Plastic is choking nature. 

I feel like ‘healthy’ and ’fresh’ is a very paradoxical issue because on the one hand leading vegetarian/vegan life or plant based lifestyle is more sustainable than animal farming and the meat industry. However, when buying nature produce as simple as apples, the grocery industry forces us to accept the whole plastic packaging, which ultimately is detrimental to the environment with endless harmful effects on nature. It is completely absurd to wrap individual apples in some form of package, or pack a salad in both a plastic casserole and then wrap plastic around it. Of course some grocery chains are stepping and rethinking this, nevertheless this is a very actively ongoing issue.

Disconnect To Reconnect by Elena Lezzi

I think that nowadays people (especially young people) are so addicted to technological devices that they can’t live without them. Because of that people can miss the beauty around them because their eyes are on the phone.

This story is about a girl who is on a beautiful lawn full of flower but she’s on the phone so she didn’t notice that. The phone connection though, it’s too low and at some point there’s no signal, so the girl is very upset because she doesn’t know what to do without her phone and she sits by a tree. It’s in that moment that she notices the beautiful flowers around her and she can finally appreciate the beauty of nature.

This piece was created by Dora Kicsi and Elena Lezzi during our online delivery of the Wild Action Programme with the London Wildlife Trust. The Wild Action Programme is one strand of the Keeping It Wild ProjectThis project is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and this particular activity strand was supported by the George Bairstow Charitable Trust.