Curbing the Rise of Land-Based Plastics from
Southwest Florida into the Gulf of Mexico
2025 Special Competition
This is your chance to work as a team, think outside the box, and earn some money for your school's Model U.N. program. Please read the details below carefully, and contact us if you have any questions. The winners of the program will be announced at the awards ceremony.
Background:
According to the Ocean Conservancy, the top five plastics found along the Gulf of Mexico’s shoreline are cigarette butts (most of which are made of a plastic called cellulose acetate), bottles, bottle caps, food wrappers, and many, many small, unrecognizable plastic shards.
Plastics also can act like sponges and absorb nasty, persistent organic pollutants, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a by-product from burning fossil fuels. These harmful substances can reach concentrations in plastic up to a million times greater than their levels in the surrounding seawater. When marine animals eat the plastic particles, these toxins enter the food chain and eventually reach our own bodies.
Your assignment:
Propose a solution for SWFL that will be acceptable to local governments to significantly reduce plastics contributed by our local residents and tourists. This solution must be realistic enough that it could be implemented across the globe.
As an example: Many high schools in our area are receiving new students who have migrated to the U.S. from various parts of the world, fleeing war and persecution, accompanying their parents to a new life, or hoping to reconstruct lives torn apart by gang wars and such elsewhere. Often these students are left to fend for themselves or integrate into a new culture without much assistance from the UN or other organizations such as the International Organization on Migration. Local agencies often appear poorly coordinated or not having in place a long term strategy. The challenge then for these students and their families is how to integrate or assimilate into a whole new culture and to do so rather quickly.
Submission format:
Your submission needs to be digital, but you're encouraged to be as creative as possible! PowerPoint, YouTube video, screenshots, etc. Work as a team to come up with the idea, and then tell us and show us how this would work.
Due date:
Your submission is due Friday, February 22 by midnight to Mo Winograd at mowinograd973@gmail.com. If you do not have an email acknowledgement by Sunday the 25th please send Mo an email so we can make sure it's not lost in spam.
Awards:
Monetary awards will be presented to the MUN clubs of the winning schools:
1st prize $1000 Howard and Nancy Cohen
2nd prize $ 750 Patrick Mattingly and Jill Force
3rd prize $ 500 Rollin Crawford
4th prize $ 350 Mickey & Mo Winograd
5th prize $ 200 Alan & Julie Van Egmond