Caring Hearts...Cleaner Society

THE PROBLEM

“Caring Hearts…Cleaner Society” (CH…CS) is an on-going educational program which started in 2016. We started this program with the hope of reducing single-use plastics in our school and the surrounding areas.

During our visit on 25th April 2019 to Kayu Madang landfill with the intention to learn further about waste management, we discovered an alarming issue which all of us need to address as soon as possible. In my city, Kota Kinabalu, the Kayu Madang landfill only has another two to three years becomes full. With all these growing environmental pressure, we are so worried about our future.

Even though my school has banned polystyrene food packaging, we are still generating, on the average, 700 pieces of single-use plastics bottles and cups on every school day based on a recent survey conducted by our team members. These single-use plastics are not being recycled because recyclers refused to collect from us. They claimed that there is no resale value since the amount collected is considered small in terms of quantity and it is not economical for the recyclers to come all the way to collect from us. Eventually, these plastics waste will go into landfill which will then take up to 1000 years to decompose. We understand the negative impacts of single-use plastics on our health, ecosystem, and ecology. We want to spread these findings and knowledge to all our friends in school as well as to the local community. We wish to change people’s mindset in littering plastic waste everywhere and to get everyone together to overcome plastic pollution by giving new life to single-use plastics.

THE SOLUTION

Our school has carried out various kinds of activities to raise awareness and promote solutions for single-use plastics since 2016. For instance, we have 'plogging' at the community areas, upcycle plastic challenge competition to encourage students to think innovatively and creatively on how to give single-use plastic a second life, speakers' corner for students to share environmental issues and many more.

This year, we focus on creating dustbins, sitting stools and heart-shaped structures made from single-use plastic bottles. We hope to inspire more students to use their own creativity to upcycle single-use plastic bottles that otherwise would have been thrown away. We hope they would realize how useful single-use plastic bottles really are, while at the same time, we can conserve natural resources and energy from producing new plastic products.

Other than that, we also wish to install the water dispenser in our school and distribute reusable food containers and drinking bottles to every student. This can help to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics and keep the school surroundings cleaner from plastic wastes.

THE IMPACT

We believe that this campaign will help change people’s mindset with regards to littering plastic waste everywhere out of convenience. We also hope that they will reduce the consumption of single-use plastics by using reusable alternatives that can be washed and used again. 

Through this campaign, we aim to inspire more students to use their own creativity to upcycle single-use plastic bottles. We hope they will realize how useful single-use plastic bottles really are by giving new life to single-use plastics that otherwise would have been thrown away. 

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