Last week on Friday marked the celebration of World Oceans Day, an occasion to reflect on the state of the world’s oceans.

In Denmark, every year over 1,000 tonnes of plastic wash up on the coast of the Northern Sea. As a result, Copenhagen International School held its own commemoration of the event on Tuesday evening, which was organised by CIS students Anna Zaske and Leonie Wechsler.

The two wished to encourage their peers to reflect on their own plastic consumption and how this affects their immediate environment. The event was intended to stress the effects plastic has on our waters and to teach the younger children about the importance of contributing to a healthy ocean.

The message from Zaske and Wechsler was simple: “we all share one ocean and thus as the generation of today, it becomes our responsibility to take our own future in our hands and protect our oceans for the future.”

The school welcomed guest speakers to help drive the message forward, including Melati and Isabel Wijsen, two young girls from Bali who founded the Bye Bye Plastic Bags organisation and have spoken at the UN General Assembly.

“We may be only 25 percent of the population, but we are 100 percent of the future,” they said.

Also speaking were Danish organisation Plastic Change and jewellery company Akva, whose work is inspired by oceans.

The event also featured an art exhibition featuring works made from plastic created by the school’s students. Daniel D’Andrea, CIS’s leader of Roots and Shoots, summarised the day’s event by saying ‘think globally, act locally’.