One girl’s mission to help save the planet

One of our wonderful members, Charlotte, has been on a mission to raise awareness of the benefits of electric cars! Find out how she’s been doing this…

Charlotte Smith (11) has been placing laminated cards on electric cars for their owners to find, thanking them for using an environmentally friendly car. Charlotte has already placed 300 cards on cars across Birmingham!

She originally came up with the idea because she kept getting a bad cough and asked her dad what was making her cough all the time. They did some research together and discovered that emissions from cars can cause all kinds of lung conditions. Apparently, your lungs can protect themselves from anything the width of a single piece of hair, however, the particles that are released from car emissions are 10 times smaller than a strand of hair!

Charlotte said, “I wanted to encourage more people to drive electric cars, but instead of punishing the people who drove normal cars I decided to thank those who drove electric cars and hope they would promote it! I love to think that these people are driving home in their electric cars feeling really good about themselves, just because I said thank you.”

Along with the help of her father, who works for Jaguar Land Rover, they decided to make a little thank you note to give to electric car drivers. Charlotte has designed these cards and all the words are her own. Charlotte’s father said,  “I think it is so special as nowadays people don’t get a free thank you – there is always something attached to it. It’s lovely to see the surprise on people‘s faces when Charlotte hands them this thank you card for doing something that they may not have even thought about.”

Charlotte said she thinks that the amount of recycling we do, and how much this is in the media, is fantastic. However she feels we need to spend more time protecting the air for the next generation – “people should think about their children and their lungs!”

**UPDATE** Charlotte’s story has now been featured in a ‘Now You Know’ video and has had over 37,500 views!! You can watch the whole thing here, or skip ahead to 41 mins and 50 seconds to see Charlotte’s feature…

We’re so proud of Charlotte for doing something positive to help the environment! Why not look out for ways your family can get involved with environmentally-friendly activities? And why not join our amazing members, like Charlotte, and see how they get inspired! Get in touch or pop into your local Explore Learning centre to book a free trial.