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[av_heading heading=’EDITORIAL | Nurturing eco-friendly students’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”][/av_heading]
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Sunday, June 18, 2017
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SCHOOL is one of the best avenues to nurture a waste-free and toxic-free learning environment for all Filipino children.
Classes have just resumed. It is timely to remind school administrators and teachers to actively implement Department of Education Order No. 5, Series of 2014. Among other things, it states that “every school shall practice waste management principles, such as waste minimization, specifically resource conservation and recovery, segregation at source, reduction, recycling, reuse and composting, in order to promote environmental awareness and action among the students.”
Let us be more concrete. Set up materials recovery facilities (MRFs) in schools. Also known as “ecology centers”, MRFs are repositories of segregated discards that can be reused or recycled, as well as a place to turn biodegradable discards such as food and yard waste into fertilizer or soil conditioner.
MRFs generally consist of a redemption area for the recyclables, a composting area for the biodegradables, an ecology garden and a display area for recycled or repurposed items from discards. Functional MRFs can play a very important role in instilling environmental consciousness and responsibility among children, particularly on the ecological way of managing wastes. By sorting discards into few categories and keeping them clean and segregated at the MRF, students are practising the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) to prevent and reduce waste and conserve resources. The school can later sell the collected recyclables to junk shops, providing the school with extra income that can be put to good use such as for school improvement projects.
Schools must also have a composting system that will cater to their needs. Depending on the volume of waste organics generated and the availability of materials and space, a school can adopt a practical system for composting their biodegradable wastes such as food and garden wastes. There is no need for fancy composting bins. You can practically use whatever container is available to compost your biodegradable discards from broken pails, clay pots, old drums and rice sacks or through pits and windrows.
MRFs and composting system – these are simple and doable in schools. Hopefully students can bring this learning home and encourage their respective families to make waste segregation a habit. So yes, the school is no doubt a good venue to nurture responsible, eco-friendly Filipino children.
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