Plastic ocean campaigner

Watch out, plastic. There's a new hero in town, and he's ready to take out the trash.

Introducing Plastic Free Boy – a 12-year-old on a mission to change the world!

His real identity is Arlian. He lives here in New South Wales and, as you can tell, he's pretty passionate about plastic waste. Well, reducing it.

Is that a plastic bag?

Yeah, it is.

Do you really need that plastic bag?

Well ...

A year ago, I was on the beach with my friend and my mum and I saw three sea turtles getting released into the ocean. And I thought to myself and I told my mum, 'Why aren't these animals in the ocean already?' And she said, 'Why don't we just make a story about it and make a film about sea turtles?', which turned into the story of plastic. And I found out that the reason they weren't in the ocean already was because of plastic, and I thought, 'Wow. This plastic pollution is having such a big impact on the sea animals and it might have a huge impact on us human beings and us children.'

You see, every year, more than 8 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean and that can be a real problem for marine life. Turtles can mistake things like plastic bags for jellyfish and eat them. That can make them really sick or even kill them, which is why Arlian has made it his mission to fight plastic pollution. And now he's made his own documentary to help.

Hey. My name is Arlian, and I'm making a film about, um, sea turtles and plastic.

Arlian made this film to help reach out to other kids and get them fired up about plastic too. And recently he got to show it at Byron Community Primary School.

There's more life in the ocean than there is on land. We need to protect the ocean for the people in the future, because if this ocean isn't clean from this plastic pollution, our water will not be clean.

Arlian says there are a few things we could be doing now to reduce the amount of plastic we use every day.

The things that you can do to make things better for the environment is not use single-use plastic bottles, not use single-use plastic straws and not use single-use plastic bags.

And he reckons if we work together, we can make the world a cleaner and safer place for us and all the other amazing creatures that call it home.

Going to keep this world TURTLE-LY alive … From this plastic pollution.

© ABC