School pupil waging war on plastic

She's Arrowtown’s eco-warrior princess, and she’s on a mission.

Eight-year-old Maggie Ryan’s passion for the environment, and love of sea creatures, has led to her pounding the pavement to let people know about the dangers of plastic.

She first typed up 40 flyers to drop in people’s mailboxes around Arrowtown, warning about the impact of plastic on sea creatures such as turtles and whales.

When those ran out, she picked up the colouring pencils and hand-made another stack."I wrote down a whole lot of words about how I felt about whales and turtles getting killed in the sea.

"I felt really sad about how people were killing the whales by putting plastic in the sea and things like that."

Arrowtown 8-year-old Maggie Ryan is on a mission to get people to reduce their plastic use. Photo...
Arrowtown 8-year-old Maggie Ryan is on a mission to get people to reduce their plastic use. Photo: Daisy Hudson

Maggie said she’d had lots of good feedback, including a barrage of positive comments from people online who had received one of her flyers.

"People have said ‘oh, so cute’ and one said I was an amazing human being."

One post in the Queenstown Trading Facebook group about the flyers attracted more than 740 "likes".

As well as the flyers, Maggie and her family are  walking the talk, recycling and trying  not to use single-use plastic. The Arrowtown School pupil had no plans to quit her environmental work when she grew up. While she wants to be a vet, she also reckoned she would travel around, spreading the word about the dangers of plastic.

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