Three members of our Community Outreach executive team spoke to representatives of the eco clubs in 3 Bangkok international schools: Ruamrudee International School (RIS), Bangkok Prep, and Bangkok Patana School (BPS), to gain insights into their aims, activities, and plans for the future.
1. What are your goals for this upcoming academic year?
Our goal initially was to focus specifically on animal conservation, however, due to the Covid-19 restrictions, our options to do hands-on conservation work have been limited, hence this year we will be focusing more on plastic pollution and the impacts that it may cause.
-Ruamrudee, Eco Merits
Our goal is to make Bangkok Prep fit the Eco School criteria. After receiving the Green Flag, we have reflected with the WWF representatives on what could be improved and are hoping to tackle that.
-Bangkok Prep, Eco Team
We aim to push for reducing food waste in Patana’s canteens, and our carbon footprint through our school’s newly-acquired land called Patana Forest. We also hope to use the land to compost our own paper and food waste at school.
-Patana, Student Environmental Committee (SEC)
2. Will there be any upcoming events to reach these goals?
An on-going project we have been working on is to incorporate a plastic shredder into RIS. We’ve previously worked with Precious Plastic and got to take a look at a variety of methods to recycle plastic into different goods. With this, we’d like to invite Precious Plastic onto our campus for future workshops and exploration.
-Ruamrudee, Eco Merits
We are currently continuing with our Eco Week for the first week back after Songkran. Since school moved online, we adapted so we could get participation from all key stages as required by Eco Schools. For some initially planned activities, such as adopting plants, we changed it to booking your plants online and getting them at school once it reopens. The money raised will be donated to Plant a Tree Foundation which will again meet the improvement plan set by the WWF representatives.
-Bangkok Prep, Eco Team
We usually have Waste Less Weeks but noticed that they have had less impact over the years. As a result, we will definitely be looking at creating new events to promote our goals.
-Patana, Student Environmental Committee (SEC)
3. Is your club focused solely on the school’s carbon footprint or are there bigger objectives (such as other schools or the wider Bangkok community)?
As of now, we are working towards engaging our school community and ensuring that our community is well aware of the current and ongoing environmental crisis which will hopefully further alter their mindset in a better direction.
-Ruamrudee, Eco Merits
Right now we are solely focusing within the school’s community. However, with Trash Lucky coming into our school and conducting the Growing Green Competition, I believe our club will soon be part of a national movement to reduce carbon footprint.
-Bangkok Prep, Eco Team
The club started with a focus mostly on our school’s policies and carbon footprint. From visiting a Thai school, we were inspired to change Patana’s snack bar. We have organised trips to Chiang Mai to provide solar power to rural areas who are not easily connected to the grid. Overall, we look forward to improving our school, as well as tackling external issues.
-Patana, Student Environmental Committee (SEC)
4. How can other clubs help with your goals/objectives?
We would encourage every club to use paper or biodegradable materials for fundraising events especially in food or bake sales. It would also be appreciated if members encouraged their target audience to put away their trash in the right place.
-Ruamrudee, Eco Merits
We have had help from the Art Prefects several times in designing our posters and Eco Code. The Houses are definitely one of the clubs we are looking to collaborate with as it would lead to higher participation rate from students.
-Bangkok Prep, Eco Team
Since most clubs are specialised towards an issue, there is usually little overlap. We tend to work with the PTG (Parent-Teacher Group) and school staff a lot to complete projects. If there are any clubs who are interested in collaboration on a particular project, we are always open to working together.
-Patana, Student Environmental Committee (SEC)
5. Why do you think that becoming more environmentally aware is important?
In modern days, environmental awareness has been difficult to instill. The amount of waste produced has exponentially increased. This has impacted aspects of pollution and toxic amounts of materials within the landfill. Without having these factors under control, the long term effects, which have slowly but surely appeared, will steer back to us.
-Ruamrudee, Eco Merits
Becoming environmentally aware means that you understand the underlying effects of human activities that may harm the environment. This is important as you will be able to avoid things that you know are environmentally unfriendly. Moreover, as students, it becomes increasingly important to understand the current state of the environment because we are the transition from one generation to the next. Conserving the environment for future generations should be our goal.
-Bangkok Prep, Eco Team
We think that being part of society means you must be individually responsible for the well-being of the collective. For example, someone who uses disposable plastic bottles or paper cups (polluting the environment) has now created a burden for society. Hence, being environmentally aware is important to ensure the prosperity of our society.
-Patana, Student Environmental Committee (SEC)
6. How are you promoting eco-friendliness or sustainability?
As we mentioned before, the plastic shredder will be displayed publicly to the RIS community. This will raise more awareness on the tremendous amount of plastics our community uses. However, it will also educate our community members that plastic recycling can be extremely useful, as it is able to create various products such as benches made from recycled plastics. In addition, by allowing community members use the plastic shredder, it allows more plastic to be recycled.
-Ruamrudee, Eco Merits
Aside from leading by example, we conduct eco activities and celebrate environment days.
-Bangkok Prep, Eco Team
We host events and provide alternatives to plastic use in our school’s snack bars and shops. On International Day, we worked with the PTG to use biodegradable plates and cutlery.
-Patana, Student Environmental Committee (SEC)
7. Which areas of being environmentally friendly are you focused on?
We have been working towards 3 main different sustainable development goals (SDGs), which are life on land, life in the ocean, and climate action. However, this upcoming year we will be predominantly working towards plastic pollution to try to raise further awareness as well as tackling this issue in a hands-on manner.
-Ruamrudee, Eco Merits
We are focusing on litter and waste management. This starts from throwing trash in the right place to separating by materials.
-Bangkok Prep, Eco Team
We have focused on decreasing plastics use in school. We researched a supplier of biodegradable food grade packaging for the sandwiches, fruits, baked goods, and smoothies. Now all plastic has been removed except for the fruit covers and the ice-creams, which come pre-wrapped. We also have stopped selling bottled water. In addition we worked with the supplier of the residential t-shirts and removed the plastic wrapping.
-Patana, Student Environmental Committee (SEC)
8. What advice would you give someone who wants to become more sustainable and environmentally aware in their daily life?
We believe that the most important way to become sustainable is to start small and gradually build up because that way, you would feel much more motivation and help you better understand the impacts that you are making on the environment. Being environmentally aware can be hard sometimes but trying to consider the outcome of every action you take can help aid you to make right decisions.
-Ruamrudee, Eco Merits
Acknowledge the problem in your community and start solving from there.
-Bangkok Prep, Eco Team
A few easy things to change are using a water bottle, using the AC at 26C, using shared transport, print double-sided and avoid printing past papers/mark schemes if possible, use reusable bags for shopping, avoid using plastic packed goods, and start an ecobrick at home. If one does all of these, they are helping a lot!
-Patana, Student Environmental Committee (SEC)
—Head of Outreach Urvi Maheshwari can be reached at urvim23@rism.ac.th. Follow her on Instagram @urvmaheshwari.
—BPS Community Outreach Meja Stalberg can be reached at mest23@patana.ac.th. Follow her on Instagram @meja101.
—BPS Deputy Community Outreach Norramon Nuntiruj (CC) can be reached at nonu23@patana.ac.th. Follow her on Instagram @cc.nuntiruj
