While Greta Thunberg channels enduring climate change fears, schools in Hong Kong are taking action
Embedding environmental issues in the curriculum encourages pupils to gain skills, transform ideas into positive action and have confidence in a better future
More and more, climate change is grabbing headlines around the world. Many of them feature 17-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg, front and centre. But while Thunberg does her thing – sailing across the Atlantic, addressing the United Nations – what is really happening at schools around the world for the average student?
In truth, climate change has been an issue for young people for a long time. I have been a school principal in three continents for more than 20 years and this has always been an issue about which young people (and the not-so-young) have felt passionate. Recycling initiatives, clean-ups of natural beauty spots and campaigns about endangered species have been promoted for many years in many areas.
What is different now is the intensity of feeling and the sense of desperation that so little has been achieved to avert the harmful effects. Whatever your personal view about climate change, one undeniable fact is that many of the initiatives mentioned are simply common sense. What can schools do? The answer is a lot, if you trust the ideas and minds of young pupils.
In our school, here are some of the actions implemented with the passionate involvement of pupils, staff and parents:
• “Naked Lunch” Fridays where no packaging in pupils’ packed lunches or snacks is allowed. Some students appeared on CNN to advocate this cause.
• Meat-Free Mondays where all choices in the cafeteria are meat-free, and this is encouraged for packed lunches too.
• Food waste composter so that all organic waste is composted. Later, pupils can use it to plant herbs and vegetables at school.
• Our “Straws are the Cause” campaign was featured in local newspapers and on a Hong Kong website to persuade people to think more about sustainable life choices.
• “How Green is your bag?” was an initiative where reusable bags were designed, made and distributed in school and in the local community as part of a pupil-led scheme to reduce single-use plastics.
• Designing a drone to pick up plastic from the ocean.
• Beach clean-ups take place regularly and are encouraged as inter-house competitions.
• Our “Week Without Waste” was inspired by Redress, the Hong Kong charity which seeks to recycle clothing and by viewings of the documentary A Plastic Ocean.
• “Greening our School” is a joint project with the PTA to improve our environment.
• A rethink of the school’s energy and resource usage has led to more environmentally-friendly cleaning products being used, timers for our air conditioning, increased recycling of paper and cardboard, and reduced electricity and water usage.
As part of a Hong Kong government initiative, solar panels will be installed on our main campus roof this year too.
By embedding environmental issues in the curriculum, we encourage pupils to gain skills, transform their ideas into positive action and have confidence in a better future.
According to the ancient Greek myth, when Pandora opened the box and released all the bad things which could damage our lives, only hope was left in the box – and it is hope which sustains us to look for a better future. The privilege of working with young people every day is to provide the hope that the environment will be safer in their hands.
