School lauded for nurturing green habits in its pupils

Some schools are planting the seeds of green living in the minds of the younger generation, and one school that has been nurturing its pupils this way is Mee Toh School.

Every Wednesday for the past two years, hundreds of pupils from the primary school in Punggol have been taking recyclables collected at home to school as part of its recycling programme.

The items, including newspapers, plastic bottles, drink cans and clothing, are weighed and sorted by class representatives with the help of parent volunteers, before they are bagged and sent for recycling the next day.

The programme is one of the school's initiatives to teach its pupils that there is only one Earth, and everyone is responsible for protecting it, said school principal Wang-Tan Sun Sun.

One of the pupils in the programme, Joclair Ng, 10, told The Straits Times she uses metal straws instead of plastic ones at home.

Since about a decade ago, the school has also been monitoring energy and water consumption on its premises. Last year, it used about 7 per cent less electricity than in 2017 by switching to LED lighting for some common rooms, and by teaching pupils to conserve energy and water, said Mrs Wang-Tan.

These efforts won the school the President's Award for the Environment at the 13th edition of the awards yesterday. The accolade is given to individuals, educational institutions and organisations in Singapore for contributing to environmental sustainability.

Past award recipients include Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and the Institute of Technical Education.

President Halimah Yacob presented the award to Mee Toh School and two other recipients, Elias Park Primary School and Singtel, at the Istana. She said: "We need everyone's support to face growing environmental challenges such as climate change."

Madam Halimah added that she hopes more individuals and organisations will follow in the footsteps of the award recipients and contribute to a sustainable and climate-resilient Singapore.

Award recipient Elias Park Primary has been active in educating young learners about the value of going green.

It has had a food waste management programme in place since 2016. Pupils are taught to place plant-based food waste, such as fruit peel, into the four electronic bio-digesters in the canteen.

Each day, these bio-digesters produce about 2kg of fertiliser, which is used for the plants in the school, said Mr Stan Lee, head of its science department.

In a Facebook post yesterday, Madam Halimah wrote that Singapore cannot talk of a future if it does not deal with the issue of climate change decisively.

She noted that some of Singapore's plans to counter the effects of climate change, which Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had touched on at the National Day Rally last month and again this week at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, required building infrastructure which is extensive and costly. PM Lee had said that it may cost Singapore about $100 billion over the long term to protect its coastline from rising sea levels and mitigate other effects of climate change.

Madam Halimah added: "They may eventually be supported by our past reserves in one way or another, something which we have been discussing with the Ministry of Finance. In the meantime, let's all do our part to mitigate the impact of climate change."