Our rhyming children's picture book 'Say NO to Plastic!' 32pp, 0-8 years

“An empowering tale of a wild bird and a caring boy, who see a simple way to make the world a better place and set about to make it happen.”

To educate and empower other kids, 15 year old Ned Heaton (founder of The Turtle Tribe) has written a children’s book with his Dad to show kids the problem of plastic pollution and what they can do about it. In beautiful rhyming prose (reminiscent of the Gruffalo series) kids will love the story and want to read it again and again. Suitable for 0-8 year olds.

Endorsed by Robert Irwin of Australia Zoo!
“Positive change for our environment will come from our youngest generation. A wonderful book like this instils a sense of passion and responsibility to care for our natural world and can help kids realise the importance of sustainability.”
Robert Irwin.

How ‘Say NO to Plastic!’ came about…

Our beaches are beautiful wild places where people go to appreciate nature, unwind, relax and have fun. Every year, Ned & his family camp on the wild Pacific Ocean beach of Moreton Island National Park. Over the years, they’ve found dead turtles, whales and seabirds – victims of plastic pollution, either from eating it or getting entangled in it. So they started collecting plastic from the beach, and every holiday spend a couple of days collecting plastic waste from the beach, to prevent it returning to the ocean and killing more sea creatures. Ned and his family now participate in regular beach clean-ups with Ocean Crusaders, Sea Shepherd, or just as a family.

But there’s a problem

As Thommo, founder of Ocean Crusaders, told Ned at a recent beach clean-up, “We could spend our entire lives collecting plastic rubbish from beaches, and it would just keep coming back, if we don’t reduce our use of plastic, and stem the tide of plastic entering the ocean.”

So much plastic is thrown away after a short useful life that an astonishing 8 million tonnes of plastic enters the ocean every year.

By 2050 there’s predicted to be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Plastic pollution is found on every beach in the world. On the Galapagos Islands, thousands of kilometres from the nearest land. In massive ocean gyres in the middle of our oceans, in plastic patches bigger than the state of Texas! It’s floating on the surface of the ocean, and settling on the bottom of the ocean, including in the deepest ocean in the world – the Mariana Trench. Fish eat it and it pollutes the food chain, including for humans. Whales, dolphins, turtles, seals and seabirds eat the fish and get plastic blocking up their guts till they die. A million sea birds are estimated to die every year with a gut full of plastic. The average human is eating around 5g of plastic (about a credit card) every WEEK!

Here’s what we’re doing about it

Ned’s bamboo toothbrush company, The Turtle Tribe, has grown to become one of the largest bamboo toothbrush suppliers in Australia, replacing around 100,000 plastic toothbrushes with bamboo ones every year. Ned has pledged to give away 1 million bamboo toothbrushes to help Aussies make the switch away from plastic, and won a bevy of awards in Australia and internationally, whilst also appearing on radio and TV in Australia and the USA.

To educate and empower other kids, Ned’s written a children’s book with his Dad to show kids the plastic crisis and what they can do about it. In beautiful rhyming prose (reminiscent of the Gruffalo series) kids will love the story and want to read it again and again. It’s suitable for 0-8 year olds, and a wonderful gift for your children, grandchildren, nephews & nieces, and more.

‘Say NO to plastic’ is a story of hope for a better future. It was written to empower children, to show them that sometimes the smallest voice can have the biggest impact, and how they can make practical changes in their daily lives to reduce the problem of plastic pollution. Roy the boy and Heidi the piedy (Pied Oystercatcher) travel from their local beach all the way to New York to tell the grown-ups in charge that it’s time for change.