School receives award for promoting and thinking green

The UAE gives a lot of importance to environmental events, activities, green living and sustainability.

Recently, we celebrated World Environment Day. I started my day by writing an article on food wastage because this year the theme for World Environment Day’s theme was ‘Think, Eat, Save’. I researched, spoke to a few people and shared my opinion and suggestions on the enormous amount of food wasted during social gatherings, weddings and parties. I also circulated my message on various Facebook pages and through magazines to encourage people to say no to food wastage.

I also visited 28 apartments in my building to request them to not throw old newspapers or any kind of paper, plastic, aluminium cans or batteries as they are all recyclable. If they are disposed off just like that, they would add to the landfill and hence aggravate the harmful greenhouse gases, leading to severe global warming.

Usually I go to 15 houses every weekend. They are the ones who are aware of my initiatives and they keep collecting their newspapers and plastic waste during the week to give to me over the weekend. But, on the eve of World Environment Day, I increased my reach from 15 to 28 households.

By evening, we were ready to appear for the Sharjah Environment Awareness Award (SEAA) by Bee’ah. This is a prestigious award that is given to schools who adopt green measures. I, as a part of a 10-member team, had worked on this project and had impressed the Bee’ah inspection team in May.

All our hard work paid off. Our school, Delhi Private School, Sharjah, won the first prize. It felt great to receive this award on World Environment Day. This day turned out to be meaningful.

I urge all the readers to think and look carefully into their day-to-day activities and adopt green ways of living. Don’t throw things that could be recycled, such as papers, plastics or aluminium cans. There are enough recycling centres in Sharjah, Dubai and elsewhere, too. Do not waste food. Pre-set the thermostat of your air conditioner so that it consumes less energy. Switch off lights if no one is using the room. Try to rely on day light during the day time.

This reader is a student of Delhi Private School based in Sharjah.

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