Zero Waste SG’s Inaugural Sustainable Schools Competition
If in doubt, gamify it…
A couple of blogs ago (is that an official measure of time these days?), I mentioned that the charity I work with had a programme specifically focusing on environmental education within schools — ZeroWaste Schools. Under the umbrella of this programme, we had secured some very generous funding from Microsoft to run a ‘Sustainable Schools’ competition.
The idea was that teams of students aged 13–15 could pitch innovative ideas to drive sustainable behaviours within their schools. Microsoft provided mentors among their staff for each of the teams and a small amount of prize money for the top 3 teams. WE were thrilled that we had 40 teams sign up, with 10 going through the initial round of judging. Ultimately, 5 teams went through to the final….
And the winner is…everyone!
As a Board Member, I was invited to be part of the judging panel and I have to say I was BLOWN AWAY by what these kids had come up with. Unfortunately, because of COVID, we had to do it virtually, but even hampered by having to view the presentations online, you could see the passion and ingenuity shine through. It absolutely reinforced to me the importance of introducing the sustainability conversation early in children’s schooling careers, plus the value of looking for solutions everywhere!
Each team was asked to do a 20-minute presentation, where they talked through the problem they were focussed on, why it was important, how they addressed it, the impact their project had, how the change would be sustained, and how they would look to scale the impact they would have in the future. They covered a range of sustainability challenges and proposed a variety of solutions…
Team 1: wanted to raise the awareness of the issue of food waste through the introduction of a competition between classes. They set various challenges through which the classes could earn points and one ultimately won a prize. For example, they set a up a bingo board for each class, with 20 tasks to be ticked off, such as drawing up a sustainable shopping list or supporting a food bank.
Team 2: addressed two challenges — 1) the consumption of single use plastics and 2) the energy consumption from utilising air-conditioning, looking to change the mindsets of the student body and drive long term behavioural change. For the first, they promoted the use of reusable bottles, encouraging their classmates to bring their own through a poster campaign and persuaded the school to purchase water coolers to help facilitate further uptake. They have also worked with the school management to stop them handing out branded water during meetings. From the energy perspective, they worked with the facilities teams to find out where air-con was used unnecessarily — as a result the sports-hall and chapel have moved from being on 24/7 to only being on when in use.
Team 3: looked at the issues of disposables within their school canteen. They cleverly realised they needed to involve the vendors in the conversation — working with them on a BYO scheme. Students would receive a small discount if they BYO containers, rather then using the polystyrene ones. They also offered an ‘express lane’ for those who did to help encourage participation. The vendors also noted that their costs went down due to not having to provide containers. Overall, the students noted a behavioural change among students and inadvertently, a growing awareness of the use of single use plastics in areas other than just the canteen where they had focused.
Team 4: also addressed the use of plastics in school through their ‘Project Lunchbox’ initiative. They enabled uptake by actually selling reusable lunchboxes at a discounted rate, plus providing storage so students could keep them at school. They drove awareness through posters and even built a 3D model called “the Life of a Plastic Bottle” and placed it in the canteen for students to have a play with. Though rudimentary (they had a very small budget), this model utilised sight and touch to allow students to understand the long-term impacts of their choices around single-use plastics.
Team 5: (who were the actual winners on the day) also looked at the issue of food waste within their school canteen. They started by isolating what they felt were the root causes of food waste — picky eaters and students running out of time between classes. In response they built a campaign of corrective posters, and bought and installed clocks in the canteen, allowing students to correctly budget their mealtime. Ingeniously, trialled the use of clear bins (which they built themselves) as a method to raise awareness of how much waste there is each lunchtime. They found the bins had a big impact on changing consciousness around waste, and lead to a change in behaviour and ultimately, less waste. Interestingly, one of the other judges was from the National Environmental Agency (a government agency), and she was interested on whether this could be scaled into other schools — which seems a fairly sensible thing to do!
As you can see, a broad range of solutions across a number of really important sustainability issues. But more importantly and heartening to see was the increase in awareness these groups reported within their school communities — one of the key aims of the programme. And they reported halo effects, as students took these new mindsets away with them and implemented changes within their homes and wider communities. Plus, they all said they had a lot of fun which is equally important.
So, all in all, the inaugural schools competition was judged a great success for both the students participating and for Zero Waste SG as an organisation. And the good news is, we have already secured a sponsor to run the same competition next year, hopefully even bigger next time!
