Microplastics are now everywhere. To anybody who this concerns, and to anybody who is reading our petition, you should know that single-use plastic is a problem. A BIG problem. Plastics are now in our soil, wild animals, water and air. 

• We are members of a K.E.E.P club sub-committee called, Tag, you're not it.
• KEEP stands for Kids Expect Environmental Protection.  We work hard toward environmental sustainability.
• Our main goal is to reduce single-use plastics and help people to notice and appreciate our ecosystem.
• But today we have a specific goal. Tag fasteners. They’re the little things that you see on clothes and accessories, the ones that look like I’ or T’s s.

• They’re so small that you probably don’t notice them when you rip them off your socks or other new clothing. They are small, but they have a big  impact. 
• We know we can't get every store on this planet to stop using plastic tag fasteners, so we are starting with a local store that has balance in its name. New Balance.
• This petition is to ask New Balance (specifically John Stokes who is the director of environmental sustainability at New Balance) to reduce single- use plastic tag fasteners.
• We found out New Balance works with Avery Dennison. We did some research and Avery Dennison is a “world leader” in Tag Fasteners and other plastics. We found out that the clothing industry actually uses over 70 billion plastic fasteners every year. Our math shows that If you lined up all 70 billion fasteners, they would wrap around the Earth forty-four times! That is enough plastic to completely fill two of our school gyms each year.  
• These tag fasteners are a problem because they are large enough to be eaten by sea animals, but small enough to slip through nets that are made to carry trash out of the ocean. They are used for almost all of New Balance's products.
• We read that New Balance and other companies are trying "biodegradable" plastic fasteners, but we know that many of these just break into microplastics faster. This makes them impossible to clean up and more dangerous for water and soil.
• The best thing for companies to use is natural fiber thread, hemp rope, or recycled paper. We also noticed that there are so many tag fasteners on just one thing. You do not need 5 tag fasteners for one sock.
• If you sign this petition it would mean a lot to our group and to all creatures in the ocean who swallow tag fasteners and the microplastics they make. We  want to work together to keep our earth clean.  Thank you for signing our petition! 

Sincerely,

The Tag You're Not It Team from K.E.E.P Club at Driscoll School, Brookline Massachusetts.

Please also see our Scrap the Cap Petition!