Nurturing young minds to reduce waste

EDUCATING the minds of the younger generation on practicing the 5Rs (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose and Recycle) is vital for a sustainable environment.

Penang Island City Council (MBPP) mayor Datuk Yew Tung Seang said according to statistics, an individual in Penang generates an average of 1.2 kg of waste daily which totals up to 928 tonnes of waste.

“Every day, 300 lorries carrying waste are sent to the Pulau Burung landfill, imagine the amount of thrash that will get accumulated over there.

“In order to increase the life span of our of landfill, we need to reduce the amount of waste generated,’’ said Yew during his speech at the prize-giving ceremony of ‘Kempen Kitar Semula F&N and MBPP 2019’ on Oct 23.

Yew said the composition of waste generated consists of food and organic (40.03%) , plastics (22.79% ), diapers (5.67%) , garden (5.86%) and others such as glass, textile, metal and etc (17.54%).

“We are also working on a project to convert food to renewable energy through council’s biogas pilot plant.

“If we do not make an attempt to reduce the waste generated, perhaps our last choice would be the incinerator which is costly.

“Before we resort to that, let us all do our part in generating less waste by practicing the 5Rs, and most importantly educating our younger generations on this,” Yew added.

The eighth edition of ‘Kempen Kitar Semula F&N and MBPP 2019’, which saw the participation of 116 schools (pre-school, primary school and secondary school) in the island, successfully collected 153,093.21 kg of recyclable items.

SK Batu Ferringghi emerged as the champion for the pre-school category for collecting 49.8kg of recyclables per student.

The second place went to SJK (T) Jalan Sungai for collecting 36.1kg per student while SK Balik Pulau secured third place for their collection of 33kg of recyclables.

For the primary school category, SJK (C) Sin Min was the winner (210kg of recyclables per student), followed by SJK (C) Eng Chuan (155.6kg) and SJK (C) came in third for collecting 67kg recyclables per student.

Meanwhile, SMK Convent Pulau Tikus topped the secondary school category for collecting 68.9kg of recyclables per student.

SMJK Chung Hwa Confucian secured second place for collecting 59.3kg of recyclables per student and SMK Padang Polo finished third with a collection of 34.7kg.

Four special awards were also presented to the schools that collected the highest recyclables in categories such as aluminium, plastics, beverage cartons and e-waste.

Story & Pix by Tanushalini Moroter