The event
The rationale of the “Bottle Collection Day” is to raise the awareness of our students to live green. In order to achieve this, we have arranged a number of recycling bins at the school gate. We have also put up posters to let our students know what is going on and we requested that they should wash the bottles thoroughly before putting them into the bins. After the event, we have recycled thirty-seven plastic bottles in total. The recycled bottles were then collected by Green Peace, a green organization. Even though the collected bottles were not many, we have at least spared no effort to organize this event.
Problems
Throughout the “Bottle Collection Day”, we have faced a number of problems which mainly included little support from schoolmates and the unwashed bottles being collected.
Regarding the support from the schoolmates, we were disappointed that many students, after drinking, threw the bottles into the bins on their respective floors. Hence, those bottles were unwashed and thus contained drinks that attracted insects like ants and cockroaches due to the sugar. This led to hygienic problem.
Solutions
There are two things that we can do for future events like this. First, in order to raise the incentive to support this event of our schoolmates, we could place recycling bins on every floor instead of at the school gate. This can, without doubt, favour the effectiveness of the event since schoolmates can directly drop the bottles into the bins on their respective floors.
Second, more promotion and guidelines are needed if we are going to hold it the second time. By emphasizing the rationale of this activity as well as the importance of the act, students can realize that their little deed can actually contribute a lot to the environment. What is more is that we should remind our students to wash the bottles thoroughly by putting up notices at the recycling bins.
Conclusion
Even though the effectiveness of this activity is quite unsatisfactory, we believe, by adopting the solutions as mentioned above, the future events will be promising.
We hope that we can organize more activities like the “Bottle Collection Day” in the future since going green is rather important for the sake of our environment. By promoting green messages, we believe our schoolmates can realize their role and do pay attention to their daily deeds so that they can go greener.