Month: November 2011

Shouts of S
BYOB! pierced the silence of a Monday afternoon at study benches along the North Spine. No one so much as lifted his or her head from studying. That did not deter 13 Earthlink members from shouting to raise awareness for their cause.

Such was their perseverance as they marched from Canteen B to Canopy K near LT1A wearing cumbersome sandwich boards advocating environmentalism. These walking advertisements pulled out all stops to attract attention. One particularly creative one had a picture of Justin Bieber, and a caption that read, “Okay, now that you’ve been captured by Justin Beiber’s intense yet soulful gaze, let’s talk about disposing waste responsibly!”

After the parade, they settled down at Canopy K and set up a booth featuring a quiz area to engage passers-by and a projection screen which displayed informational videos about the harmful effects of plastic bags on the environment.

At the booth, Campaign Management Officer Srivathsan Murali gamely dressed up as a mascot to draw eyeballs for the campaign. His costume, made up of plastic bags in various neon shades, did indeed garner attention for the cause.

At the quiz area, passers-by were quizzed about their knowledge of the environment. The toughest question involved answering which things were made from reusable materials. No one could guess correctly, from the photograph shown, what reusable materials a Buddhist temple in Thailand was made of. The surprise they express when the material was revealed to be beer bottles was interesting to behold. It also highlights the fact that materials we encounter in our daily lives are more useful than we think. As a reward, participants were given pin badges with positive environmental messages like S
Go Meatless printed on them, as well as notepads.

This BYOB Roadshow kickstarts the BYOB Awareness Week which seeks to inform people at NTU about the new BYOB initiative that will continue until the end of 2011: 10 cents will be charged for plastic bags used at each purchase at retail outlets in NTU. Throughout the week, Earthlink ambassadors were also stationed at the cashiers of these locations to inform customers about the initiative.

The ambassadors also try to convince customers who habitually use plastic bags to think twice and consider the harmful effects of plastic bags: plastic bags take centuries to biodegrade, thus taking up space in landfills. Also, in seas and oceans, they are a hazard to the wildlife which mistake plastic bags for food. Plastic bags also go through a photodegradation process in which they are broken down into small toxic substances which pollute the environment. Thus, while plastic bags are may seem convenient now, we will actually have to pay a high price for our use of them in future.

260 million tons. The amount of plastic used worldwide every year. 1 trillion. The number of plastic bags consumed. 1000 years. The time it takes for a plastic bag to degrade. 180. The species of marine wildlife affected by ingestion of plastic waste. These numbers are not merely statistics but the indicators of a problem of massive proportions. The International Coast Cleanup (ICC) is an initiative that takes concrete steps towards minimizing, documenting and generating awareness for this pandemic.

The ICC is an annual event where volunteers collect waste and collate data on the garbage and debris accumulating on shorelines of the world s lakes, rivers and oceans. It is conducted simultaneously in about hundred countries, coordinated by a non-profit US-based agency, The Ocean Conservancy and in Sinagpore, it is organized by volunteers from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research. It was held on the 17th of September and Earthlink NTU participated in the event for the eighth time, continuing to support the cause this year as well. Earthlink s contribution to ICCS is being awarded at the Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium III, presented by Minister of State for National Development, BG (NS) Tan Chuan-Jin.

The group, comprising of NTU students from different schools, reached the site, Pandan Mangrove, at eight in the morning. After a briefing by the zone manager about the safety measures and data collection method, the volunteers got down to clearing the trash from the allocated areas. Plastic bottles, bags, styrofoam and other different kinds of trash material were gathered, while each group kept counting and categorizing the collected items on data cards to ensure a proper records. These go on to influence laws and policies governing the management of waste in different parts of the world.

The coastal cleanup was both a fun and a fruitful experience for everyone involved and after two hours of hard work, Earthlink managed to collect 96.5 kgs of waste, contributing to the total 1,977 kgs collected in the South Zone. The club hopes that this adds to the cumulative effect of the entire movement and goes a long way in ensuring and maintaining the purity of coastal areas in Singapore.