Top dog award for going after plastic trash

Published on: Sunday, February 07, 2021

By: Kan Yaw Chong

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SM St. Patrick’s School Green Team.

MOUNTING a vigorous mind and action battle to end plastic pollution won SM St Patrick’s Tawau the prestigious Seameo-Japan ESD Award last week, beating all 181 challengers across Southeast Asia.

From the outset, the school knew what they were in for – show proof of transformation or evidence of a complete correction of mind and practices needed to rid the global plastic scourge.

In that context, we are very happy that SM St Patrick’s Tawau zeroed into what success requires-a radical change of mind, behaviour and practices.

With that world class victory, maybe they can lead this transformation of mind big-time to end the scourge.

But why is plastic pollution a scourge and why think about the plastic trash?

We know plastic ingestion kill 1.4 million marine animals every year.

We are told, by marine engineers, that by 2050, there’ll be more plastic than fish, weight for weight, that is, eventually destruction of the oceans.

To cite a shocking statistics, more than nine out of 10 European Fulmar that eat at sea – die with plastic rubbish in their stomachs, one even hit a staggering count of 1,600 plastic bits.

Closer to home, four to five Sundays ago, I published a Special report on a marine biologist in the Philippines pulling out 49kg of plastic bags from the stomach which killed a juvenile beaked whale.

In other words, plastic litters are fast becoming the hangman in our seas and oceans.

Why complete change of mind?

Because that’s what transformation means.

School very clear on its mission

Success requires change of mind – driving that change requires both sides of the brain, passion to reach goals, resolution to act.

A school, especially good schools, like St Patrick’s my old school by the way, are well-placed to do good teaching and produce good minds.

SM St Patrick’s Tawau is very clear on this starting truism, and deserved the triumph over 181 schools in eight countries to win a Seameo-Japan ESD 2020 Award, announced online on January 30.

Seameo is an acronym for Southeast Asia Ministry of Education Organisation and ESD means Education for Sustainable Development.

Seameo-Japan ESD Award organisers gave everybody a theme: “Addressing Plastic Problems for Transforming Communities”.

Seameo’s intention is clear – transformation or nothing less than a complete change community mindset can put a stop the plastic litter scourge.

Five Greens Programme

St Patrick’s came up with their Five (5) solution programme or scheme plan entitled “Go Green, Live Green, Love Green, Think Green, Be Green – The End Plastic Pollution” Campaign.

Maybe they never expected to win but win they did.

To get there, school Principal Lee Ken Voon told Daily Express he and the collective body of decisionmakers realised a key “first step” must happen: How to penetrate minds en masse – embed the right attitude or frame of mind among hundreds, establish values or judgement on what’s important, change their behaviour or conduct towards plastic in this case, knowledge or information and facts about plastic, skills acquired through experience with plastic and what matters finally – daily practices at school, extending to the home and beyond.

“Think Green Live Green” can be as abstract as a grand design to care about the entire planet and mount vigorous actions in and out of class, involve and engage parents, ex-students, society, local authorities, NGOs, expected by the organisers to prove impact on community mindsets and practices.

Mounting an insurmountable challenge

But St Patrick’s was prepared to mount the insurmountable challenge.

The Five (5) Greens Programme theme was set: Go Green, Live Green, Love Green, Think Green, Be Green – The ‘End Plastic Pollution’ Campaign.

A series of eight activities and strategies worked out.

But the magic is always implementation with vigorous action.

Seameo-Japan ESD had made it clear what is important is information on strategies and each of the eight activities the school had actually implemented and accomplished with supporting documents.

Activity1: Classroom teaching

to penetrate minds

Activity 1: Use of ‘Plastic, Sustainability & You’ Module in Classroom Teaching.

Anything the Japan Government does always ask for an Action plan.

Activity 1 is the Action Plan and Yearly Lesson Plan for the Module designed to penetrate minds on the imperative of ending plastic pollution

This module meaning course of study contains six chapters which provide related information about plastic and proper waste management.

Its ability to inspire is the key, nothing happens until people are mentally stimulated to feel or do something, especially do something transcendental.

“This module serves to serves teachers and students to think about the choices and decisions they can make to care for the environment,” said Principal Lee.

“For SM St Patrick’s our school is equipping our teachers and students with the right information about plastic through using this module book.”

“This is the first step towards embedding the proper plastic knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, behaviour and daily practices into to build discipline based on this module’s Action Plans,” he said.

“Our school teachers are using this module: ‘Plastic, Sustainability & You’ to teach the students 40 minutes a week from January to December 2020, by covering the Yearly Lesson Plan set out in the book,” Lee said.

Teaching and learning never cease.

“Even during Covid-19, we continued with Home Based Learning 18 March to 17 July 2020.”

But besides use in the classroom, the module was also used as a tool or resource during physical education period, in addition running the extra curriculum particularly the Environment Club’s activities such as the Plastic Bottle Product Making Innovation Competition and the Plastic Knowledge Environmental Quiz Competition, Lee noted.

Clearly a lot of time, thought and work were invested into course content.

But as ancient Chinese philosopher poet Lao Tzu and founder of Taoism has said: “Knowledge is a treasure but the key to get it is practice”.

But to move the plastic campaign far, the idea of a long “Green Corridor” was hatched.

Activity 2: Green Corridor to ramp up mood and messages

Activity 2 focussed on the Construction of the “Green Corridor” project.

The Green Corridor is a 101m-long school walkway where the students and teachers pass every day.

The construction of Green Corridor was initiated and sponsored by the School Board of Management, Parent-Teacher association (PTA), School Alumni Association and Non Government Organisation.

The purpose of the Green Corridor is to set a mood throughout the school to expose the whole school to environmental education activism beyond the confines of the classroom.

The idea is to hit a collective impact on school authorities, parents, stakeholders about the benefits of practising sustainability as a way of life.

The corridor turned out to be a venue to post significant messages on the importance of environmental preservation and conservation particularly displays of information on plastic usage and waste management system.

Drilling home famous

3Rs anti-waste behaviour

Construction of the Green Corridor is a classic example of a participatory approach because it was a collaboration between students, teachers and NGOs who crafted 10 characteristics to drill home the well known anti-waste motto – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

One online report says 80pc of Australians already use this “responsible consumer behaviour” to stop trashing Australia with land litter which also means stop trashing the seas with killer plastic wastes.

Well, St Patrick’s has vigorously promoted this responsible consumer behaviour through its Green Corridor.

Imagine the impact if 80pc of all schools in Southeast Asia get that 3Rs implemented and 80pc of Southeast Asians embrace this responsible consumer behaviour, the plastic trashing of this region will quickly stop.

Activity 3: Encourage

creative design from plastic

The third question is what to do with the classrooms.

SM St Patrick’s has 35 classrooms. It was decided they are ideal for “Creating Sustainable Corner”.

This means making teachers lead students to think “creativity and innovation” – how they can turn solid waste like plastic bottles to design and create useful items and patterns that can be displayed in the classroom.

Plastic litter is a mind problem. The very act of “throw” means most people regard it as useless or not worth a sen.

But as Lao Tzu noted: “If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.”

Reading up on what they had done, it is clear that St Patrick’s targeted young minds for a major corrective “mind surgery” to help reverse an escalating plastic trash hopefully with a lasting impact.

This age touts innovation as a solution to all problems.

Activity 4: Innovative

products from plastic waste

Small wonder Activity 4 is what it is so titled: “Innovations of Plastic Waste Project”.

Here we read about students making innovative products such as desks and chairs out of plastics by using 156 units of 1.5-litre plastic bottles.

In addition, there were six other prescribed innovations such as Musang King Durian replica; a giant Badminton shuttlecock statute; Repaired broken plastic chairs for reuse under the Repair and Reuse Project; Creating of a Green Wall out of plastic bottles to invoke Green Technology; Say No to Plastic Rubbish Bins and Say No to Plastic Flower Pots along the Green Corridor to drill home the Reduce motto.

Activity 5: Useful Ecobrick contains plastic spread

One of the worrying problems is since plastics are non-biodegradable, every piece of the eight billions tonnes of plastics ever made is still around, in loose bits and pieces, a majority of them had spread around the globe.

Is there a way to compact loose plastic waste to contain this spread?

The answer is yes.

The ‘Ecobrick’ programme in Activity 5 teaches students and teachers alike to collect plastic waste from snack packets, plastic bags and wrappers used at home and stuff them into a 1.5-litre plastic drink bottle to make eco-bricks.

This idea probably had never crossed the minds of most people but it sounds like a good tactic to contain plastic proliferation all across the landscape, waterways, beaches and seas.

It not only reduces pollution, eco-bricks can be used as building materials to create insulated walls, fences, outdoor furniture and in the case o St Patrick’s, make borders and fences in the school’s herbal garden.

“The eco-brick initiative is a simple, creative and fun project to help raise our students’ awareness on the management of non-biodegradable rubbish such as plastic wastes. These are basically plastic bottles paced tightly with clean, dry non-biodegradable waste,” Lee noted.

Sixth Activity: Say ‘No’ to Plastic Bags

The sixth activity concern plastic bags. Ultra light and tenacious, plastic bags are extremely convenient for shoppers and supermarkets but they are one of biggest killers of marine animals which mistake them as food.

As noted aforesaid, I had done a report on a marine biologist pulling out more than 40kg of plastic bags from the stomach of a juvenile beaked whale killed by the huge ingestion and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As expected, St Patrick’s implemented a “No Plastic Bags” Campaign at the School Canteens.

“We asked the teachers and students to bring their food containers to buy food at our four school canteens to reduce food packaging.

“We hung a banner ‘No Plastic Bags’ Campaign to remind the school community to reduce plastic usage by reusing items,” Lee said.

We have said plastic pollution is killing the marine animals in an alarming manner.

The solution to prevent plastic destruction of the seas is on land, according to Marco Simeon, founder of Race for Water Foundation.

That means vigorous plastic collection on land to stop the deluge of plastic invasion of waterways a bodies is the answer.

Seventh Activity: Plastic Collection

and Recycling Centre

Again, St Patrick’s is commendable in that under Activity 7, the school had created what looks like a robust Collecting and Recycling Centre for Plastic Waste to stop plastic escaping from land to the rivers and seas.

“We started our programme to gather all plastic waste by establishing and plastic collecting and recycling centre with recycling bins.

“On top of that, a recycle storeroom was also built to keep all the plastic bottles destined for use in various plastic related environmental activities in the school. This practice of waste separation of at school ensures that most plastics don’t end up in landfills,” Lee explained.

Activity 8: Beyond school is Planet earth

Last but not least, Activity 8 themed “Join a Clean-up” trains minds to look beyond our school and how that fits into a grand design.

“We are ready to take the first step in protecting our planet. Therefore we join ‘a cleanup’ every year and work together with our school partners across the globe such as the Junior Chamber International Malaysia (JCI Malaysia) Tawau District, English Access Programme Students under the US Embassy of Kuala Lumpur, Boys’ Brigade in Malaysia Tawau District and the Rotary Club to clean the ecosystem of Tawau City community.”

“Part of the idea is to build up ‘a cleanup’ crew comprising students and teachers for active participation and involvement in the local community to contribute to a cleaner and healthier community in Tawau two, the beaches and coastal areas,” Lee said.

Of course, we are not naive to think SM St Patrick’s Five Greens Programme is a model solution to the global plastic scourge.

But, it sows a seed.

Replication of St Patrick’s top dog

success en masse will have telling

impact

If its effort is replicated by all schools, the impact on the plastic litter scene will be telling.

Above all, its win big inspiration is important in getting all students, all schools, all communities, all local authorities and governments to mount vigorous plastic activism to tame this very serious threat and win the war.

Remember, the oceans are on the chopping block.

The hangman is plastic pollution.

A classic example of “tragedy of the commons” is happening to one of the most critical ecosystems of planet earth.

However bad we think plastic pollution is, the truth is most people will still show no interest and won’t care because the incentive to use plastics is irresistible.

The eventual doom of the oceans is very real because nearly each of 7 billion humans has an “incentive” to continue demand for virgin plastics and, therefore, plastic pollution will continue to escalate and intensify until the oceans and marine life are choked to death!

What St Patrick’s winning programme has done is to tell the world the only way to break the clutch of plastic scourge is vigorous teaching to penetrate hearts of minds of young people en masse so that the incentive to use plastic shall soon be transformed into an incentive to care for planet earth.

Involvement of parents is crucial in the project. At right is Principal Lee Ken Voon.

Marine biologist pulled out 49kg of plastic bags which killed a beaked whale in the Philippines. Regular fatal kills like this vindicates St Patrick’s say ‘No‘ to plastic bag campaign.