More publicity, more education on going green

Creating Public Awareness

It appears that there is a surging effort to create public awareness about the benefits of going green. This morning's Straits Times in featuring in its job recruitment section careers in the public sector, highlighted the job of an environmental health officer in the National Environmental Agency who took the opportunity to promote her passion about recycling. I thought what a coincidence it is to see something like this in the newspapers when I had just posted something similar last night (previous post).

First page of job recruitment section of The Straits Times , Sat, Feb 11, 2006

As I continued with my Saturday morning reading of the pile of newspapers for the day, I saw another article that relays a similar environmental message, this time about cutting down on the excessive use of plastic bags.

Weekend Today, Feb 11- 12, 2006, Page4

Campaigns to Educate

There is going to be a new national campaign to discourage the excessive use of plastic bags that will be launched this morning by a minister and participating retailers are leading supermarkets. The article also gives startling figures about our use of these plastic bags. According to the report we dispose of up to 19,000 tons of these bags annually. Just imagine the weight of 19 one-tonner army trucks and imagine how many plastic bags it will take to weigh that much.

I think it takes more than a campaign to get people to adopt the habit of not using and disposing these bags so liberally just because they are given to us free just as liberally. At home I adopt a habit of not allowing food stuff to be thrown in any dustbin in the house other than the one in the kitchen and when I empty dustbins elsewhere in the house I keep the plastic bag in the bin as it is still clean. In this way I use not more than 2 plastic bags a week per bin. The problem I face now is that I have accumulated so many plastic bags that it is a pain to see them. At the same time, I do not want to throw them.

Whom should we educate?

Our children - responsibilities of parents and schools

Currently, students are involved in some compulsory community service activities that include cleaning beaches, packing clothes and toys for charity, recycling cans but most times the real learning does not go beyond what they do for the school's activities and projects. For example, my children have gone through all these activities, attended talks on why they should treat the earth well through "Reduce, Reuse and Recycle" and yet at home, there is no trace that they truly understand why they have been put through those motions by their schools. I have become tired of nagging at them to keep their rooms clean and to be discrimate about what to throw away and what to keep for resusing or recycling. I have particularly impressed upon them that in this house, I practice the 3Rs. Yet there is no end to my nagging because they just don't get it - that the message of being kind to the earth is not for its own sake like those countless activities they were involved in at school but it is a message to the heart that tells them that they should recycle not because they were told or made to but because they really believe that they are doing something meaningful and good. This is the tough part because it has to do with their values and beliefs which

So recently, I have changed my tactic from nagging to leaving notes for them like what I did last week. I gathered all the items that have long outlived their use from their bathroom and their table tops and put up a mini exhibition in the one of their rooms. The I waited to see how quick the response would be to the appeal in the note. It took all of three days before these items appeared in a plastic bag for my attention and proper disposal on the kitchen sink. However, I will continue with this writing of notes and leaving it on their table. I find this less tiring and more creative on my part. My kids and others like them need constant reminding and to know that I am serious about what I believe in and hopefully they will begin to appreciate what all these efforts about. Not many parents will bother because there are always maids to take care of the rubbish. Then, if we have maids, we should educate them as well.

In school, our children should be given projects in keeping the environment green through educational approaches that require them to examine their values and beliefs first and to relate these to the activities to be carried out. Students should be taught how to reflect and to journal and share their feelings and thoughts at each stage of the activity that they carry out in the name of recycling. I do not know if teachers bring students through a process like this in implementing all of the school's projects that are related to preserving the environment or are these projects just carried out mechanically just to count as a number that goes towards school's countable achievements. Education is not a matter of doing, it is a matter of understanding first why we do the things we do before jumping into action.