Students in Sarah Gilchrist’s English 10 class at Osoyoos Secondary School, including (from left) Cassidy Burns, MaKenna Pederson and Kayla Burns, want to see a mandatory five-cent charge on plastic bags in town. (Vanessa Broadbent / Osoyoos Times)

By Vanessa Broadbent

Osoyoos Times

Youth across the globe are rallying to call on world leaders to address the climate crisis, and their Osoyoos counterparts are hoping to inspire change at a local level.

Students in Sarah Gilchrist’s English 10 class at Osoyoos Secondary School want to see a new bylaw in Osoyoos mandating that businesses charge five cents for plastic bags.

After researching the climate crisis, Gilchrist guided students in brainstorming ways they could make a difference in their own lives.

“The whole unit left them feeling depressed and like the world’s coming to an end and there’s nothing we can do about it,” she said. “I said ‘why don’t we try and see if there’s something we can do here so that you feel like you have power and agency and feel like you can do something meaningful in our own community?’”

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Eventually the focus narrowed to reducing single-use plastics and students proposed advocating for a complete ban on plastic bags in Osoyoos businesses.

But research questioned the impact of an outright ban, Grade 10 student MaKenna Pederson said.

Along with increasing sales of thicker plastic garbage bags and paper bags, contributing to the forestry sector’s carbon footprint, not all reusable bags are completely eco-friendly, the students found.

“Most people in the public just think that reusable bags are better for the environment but going back we found you’d actually have to use that bag 171 times just for it to compare to one plastic bag.”

Instead the students proposed a mandatory five-cent charge on plastic bags, encouraging shoppers to use less.

Last week students visited businesses in Osoyoos to share their plan.

“Most of the feedback was really positive and most businesses already had a tax on plastic bags,” student Cassidy Burns said.

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“They were really happy that we were trying to make a change, that it wasn’t just like we’re talking about it and not trying to do something about it,” Kayla Burns added.

The students plan to present to town council in 2020 to suggest passing a bylaw requiring the five-cent charge. They’re also visiting Osoyoos Elementary School in the new year to share their message with younger students.

They hope the bylaw will inspire other communities to do the same.

“By doing this we’re hoping to show other communities that if a small town can do it, why can’t a city do it,” Pederson said.

“We’re trying to save our future,” Kayla Burns said. “It gives me hope that if more students like us, more schools like us start doing things like this, trying to make a change, that maybe somewhere, somehow people are going to realize these youth are stepping up and trying to change and we need to start actually putting big actions onto this.”