Plastics Crisis – Actions at the Community Level – August 2026

After a lull the last few months, there are community actions shaping up for the fall and winter for our Beyond Plastics Ozarks group!

We have a February date for the show of the Plastic People movie sponsored by the City of Springfield and are gearing up to get the word out to the community and recruit some people for the panel discussion after the movie.

There are 2 reducing plastics presentations coming up – one in November and one in December…and participation in an interest/experience activity (plastics is one of six ‘tables’).

I am glad there are things to feel positive about locally since a headwind of a story came out in the Washington Post this week (“Leaked memo shows how US aims to weaken global limits on plastic pollution”).

Homeschool Fair 2025

I provided a Missouri Master Naturalist table at an annual Homeschool Fair; the year it was held at the Springfield Botanical Garden. Our original location was not available (a delay in a renovation) so we were on a grassy area under a canopy. I shared my tree table with another Master Naturalist doing a soil filtration demo! The image below is what the table looked like before the crowd.

While we were setting up, it was very foggy, and we wondered if we would get some rain. Fortunately, it didn’t rain although here was a brief time that was blustery, and we had to grab things on the table and legs of the canopy! That was all before the event started.

The event was from 10-2 with a short break for lunch (for me it was only enough time to eat a protein bar). There were over 400 people that came by our table and I gave out all my copies of Missouri Department of Conservation booklets on trees.

Between the Homeschool Fair and the Native American Heritage Celebration, our chapter of Missouri Master Naturalists interacted with about 1000 people! There are some lessons learned to apply to future events:

• Have at least 2 volunteers per table during peak times

• Assign the person not doing as much talking to use the clicker…get a good count of people visiting the table

• Tie the 2 corners of the tablecloth together at each end of the table; the table clothes are extra-large so this helps keep them from dragging on the ground plus reduces the impact of breezes on the tablecloth.

• The table signs for the chapter take too much room on the table. We need an alternative type of sigh…maybe something that could hand from the canopy.