Waste management is one of the most important environmental issues the world and its governments are facing. When it comes to people, many of us know that waste is a problem, but don’t have a clear idea of what to do to solve it. We, for example, mix sometimes Recycle and Reuse. Is using the plastic bags from the supermarket as dustbin or doing art with trash recycling? It is not of course it is reuse. On the other hand, are the bins where we throw recyclable trash actually recycling bins? They are sorting bins… And the waste hopefully goes for recycling afterwards, if collected by the right company (such as our friends from Green Truck!).
Last wee eedama organized a workshop about these topics for Kids, parents and teachers of the Swiss International Scientific School in Dubai. We went to the school and discussed about the differences between reuse and recycle, making an emphasis on the important impact of reducing.
The workshop started by an informal discussion with the kids in their classrooms. We discussed the following topic: where do most of the objects we use in our daily life come from? They were impressed to learn that all plastic objects originally come from oil (petroleum). And in order to produce these objects from you… factories need to be fueled by oil! Or sometimes by electricity, that is most often produced… by oil! Knowing that oil is a finite resource and that burning it pollutes and contributes to climate change. Everybody agreed on the necessity of following this simple thinking process when thinking about our use of objects:
- Reduce
- If not possible… Reuse
- If not possible… Recycle
They had to think of how to apply these simple principles with a number of plastic objects, and they took back with them plastic bottles with a small lentils plantation, as well as nice plastic jars from our friends from TheSaladJar.
In order to go further, we have developed a game where they apply these three principles with a broader variety of objects.
The morning ended up with a field trip to The Change Initiative, where they could see real-size positive initiatives, such as the refill station for washing liquids
We live in the 3rd country with the highest environmental footprint per capita, (World Wide Fund, 2014) … we have to start today to be responsible residents, and to provide our children the right tools to build their own sustainable future.
