Cultivating green habits

It's good to see that schools are now aggressively promoting awareness about the environment and global warming among their students. The earlier you start building green habits, the better chance you have of behavioural change that will eventually help save our planet. Kerry Dyke, environment coordinator of the International School Bangkok, has been extremely active in organising environmental awareness programmes for the past two years. Part of his success is introducing an environmental elective for students where they have to make an environmental change as a part of their grade.

Spearheading the school's activities is a group called the ISB Green Panthers, which is made up of environmentally conscious teachers, parents and board members. According to their blog (isb-green-panthers.blogspot.com/), the group's aim is ''to increase environmental awareness at ISB and more importantly, start making positive environmental changes to reduce the school's eco [carbon] footprint. Green Panther goals are to improve ISB's environmental performance by: Activating environmental awareness, learning and action; analysing consumption patterns and habits at ISB; modelling responsible citizenship; providing venues for meaningful social action and reducing our impact on the environment.''

The school also offers an ISB Earth Award to individuals or collective projects, which raise awareness on environmental issues and inspire students to fight for change.

The school's canteen now offers organic dairy products from Dairy Home where animals receive an organic diet and the farm follows free range practices.

Some of the eco changes at ISB from 2004-2006:

FChanged paper to a new brand that has an eco-friendly record and makes paper from fast growing plants; not trees.

FSet up a reuse paper tray.

FEco-class room checklist. Each classroom had a contract and they chose what they would accomplish on that contract, e.g., to use only one air-con instead of three.

FBan on styrofoam.

FOrganised Earth Week.

FNo disposable dishes for bake sales.

Eco changes from 2006-2007, since the forming of

the Green Panthers:

FAn improved recycling centre that collects batteries, tabs from cans, juice boxes, printer cartridges and mobile phone batteries.

FBlue box for each class for paper recycling.

F Reduced the plastic bag use in the cafeteria from 300-plus a day to zero!

FStopped the use of paper cups for sports teams and helped encourage teams to use reusable water bottles.

FWeekly eco tips in the student bulletin.

FWeekend trip with 25 students to Khao Yai to work with Wildaid and learn about conservation.

FEnsure new building and campus design has the environment in mind.

FIntroduced dishes to use at events instead of disposable materials.

FImplemented a no idling policy in the parking lot.

F An Inconvenient Truth shown in middle and high school.

FHosted Earth Week and Earth Fair.

Changes in 2007/2008:

FLooking into organic rice and other products. Fair trade is also considered.

FStarted the Green Panthers blog, isb-green-panther.blogspot.org

FPlanted over 50 trees around campus with the students.

FCollecting newspapers and plastic bags and donate to Thaicraft Fair Trade organisation to make crafts to sell and help poor communities.

FEco weekend trip with WWF.

FStarted a tree nursery at school, with plant-a-tree-today to help ISB reduce and offset its carbon footprint.

Among the many plans for the future is a project to set up a biogas converter, which will convert food waste into biogas for use in the kitchen. And once again this year ISB will be holding its Earth Week from April 21 to 25 with several activities and special events related to the environment each day. The week rounds up on April 25 with the 2nd annual Earth Fair joined by other ''green'' corporations.

How are you helping to reduce your carbon footprint? Share your eco-friendly activities with us by emailing usnisas