Dubai
We have an unlimited use of plastic in today’s world, which is threatening the very ecosystem we need for our survival. Being an eco-enthusiast and involved with recycling campaigns inside and outside school over the past few years, I have taken this cause to heart and have started a collection and recycling campaign in my building community, in the Al Ghusais area of Dubai.
For over two years, I have been involved with ensuring that an awareness campaign is carried out and also a suitable disposal of plastic waste is practiced in my building.
To begin with, I started with my own home. Subsequently, I gained the support of my friends Aditya D. Nair and Chaitanya Kandpal, who are of my age and my neighbours. We started by informing all households in the building about the menace of plastic, encouraging them to reduce its use, reuse whatever that can be and then ensure that the balance is recycled or disposed suitably, if recycling is not possible.
Thereafter, the three of us have been going door to door every week, without fail, to collect the plastic waste from homes. The collected plastic is deposited at a local non-profit organisation for recycling.
Our policy is, ‘If we won’t, who else will?’
We started in earnest in 2013 and are continuing till date. Our school schedules, exams and other activities have never kept us from this duty that we have taken upon ourselves. I can say with pride that we have managed to collect 600 kilograms of plastic from a single building. The building community has many a times expressed happiness at such responsible behaviour from a few students.
Taking this further, I have gone to other buildings in the neighbourhood to start a campaign among children. I aim to enlist a task force of student volunteers in the neighbouring buildings to ensure that firstly we reduce plastic waste from our community and then recycle whatever we have and cannot reuse. This will also help raise awareness about this issue.
I would like to encourage readers to take similar initiatives. If a small group of children can achieve this, we can envisage the results if more and more members of the community engage in such campaigns. As twelve year olds, we are doing our share for a cleaner environment. We need support from the community to keep our city green. Let all of us begin a conscientious effort to keep plastic from choking the Earth.
— The reader is a pupil based in Dubai.
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