IGC Award participants at Sha Tin College, Hong Kong, China are working to improve their school's sustainability.

[Boyd Roberts]

At Sha Tin College, Hong Kong, China, the IGC Award participants are members of the school’s Environment Action Group which is working to make the school a more sustainable place. These notes from Glenis Paul for January 2008 indicate how busy they have been!

EAG notes for January…

Hello everyone,

Just thought that I would summarize what has been happening during the last 4 weeks and outline some of our future projects.

Changes to the canteen

Well done to the Alvin, Dominic and Isaac (Year 12) who worked together to produce the ‘Changes in the canteen – the bold new plan’ power point that you saw in assembly. A big thanks is due also to Mr. Ortega who proofread and improved the text of the power point and to Mr. White for adding the music. I asked a number of senior students what they thought of the changes that are going to happen to the canteen and everyone was quite positive.

Aurora, Michelle and Sabah (Year 12) have been working very hard on producing a great video that will be shown in year assemblies/tutor times after the holidays. The video features a number of students and staff and is aimed at reinforcing the idea that change is going to happen. You can get a sneak preview of the video on You Tube by clicking on the link below. A big thank you to Mr. Dickson who provided technical support during the editing of the video. Thanks must also go to Mr. Cottam, Mr. Campbell and Mr. Lewis for their starring roles in the video.

The Year 7 girls (Kristy Chan, Sonya Chen, Sally Kim, Agnes Yu, Haley Lor, Michelle, Emily Lim, Tiffany Ma) have been working hard at lunchtimes making posters to go around the canteen and washing up trolleys, reminding people to place plates, trays and cutlery in the correct washing up containers.

Sharon and Cindy (Year 12) have made a huge poster titled “New Canteen Protocols”. This poster clearly outlines the process students and staff will need to take to clear their plates and clean up after themselves. This poster will be displayed on the first or second floor notice board after the holidays.

The start of the second week back is when we will finally be able to reduce the use of disposal plates and cutlery at STC. Once again a big thanks to everyone who has worked hard this month to help make this happen.

Rooftop garden

Aaron, Simon, Antoni, Julian, Sam and Kysha, all from Year 12, visited tutor groups asking students to bring cuttings of plants into school. The response to this request has not been great and we may have to try plan B, not sure what that is yet. The idea is to get many cuttings and allow them to produce roots and when it is a bit warmer plant them into the garden. Thank you to Mr Chui for all his hard work and great ideas with this project.

Aaron and Simon have also produced a poster that has been placed in apartment complexes near the school requesting people to donate their CNY kumquat (mandarin) trees to STC EAG rather than throwing them away. The idea is that we can incorporate the trees into our garden, or use the pots for future planting.


Vehicular emissions

Annie C and her group have decided the way forward with the problem of bus exhaust fumes in the carpark is to write Citibus and the PTA outlining the problem and possible solutions. The main problem is that all of the buses have their engines running to maintain the air-conditioning within the buses. One possible solution is asking drivers to turn their engines off once they have parked and then turn them on at 3.20pm. Annie and her group have other possible solutions to present to Citibus and hope to do this after CNY.

Business

Angela and Annie M (year 12) have been working with Mrs Francis creating manageable spreadsheet to use for the upcoming marketing and sale of organic strawberries to students and their families.

The staff have been purchasing very tasty organic strawberries from a Fair Trade farm in Tai Po and the idea is to extend the sale of these yummy delights to the students. The year 11 students in the Business group will be working on their marketing campaign after CNY and sales of strawberries will begin at the end of February on International Fair Trade day.

Fair Trade

This group consists of Year 11 student who have been very busy with exams. They have completed research into what is Fair Trade and how STC could support the sale of Fair Trade products. They will be working with Ms. Ho to produce displays and hopefully a Fair Trade stall selling Fair Trade products on February 28th, which is International Fair Trade day.

Fact Finding

Pema, Sonia, Christina and Jerome attended an afternoon training session run by CLP on how to complete an energy audit. This was an excellent learning opportunity about what specific things need to be measured to obtain data that allows you to look at how STC can reduce and improve its use of electricity.

Jersey, Arlene and Ellen, all from Year 11, attended the ESF Environment Inset Day held at Renaissance College after their final mock exam. They spent the morning learning how to complete a green audit of a school. During the afternoon they were out at Hoi Ha Marine Reserve and were able to spend time on a glass bottom boat looking at the marine life within the park.

This group will be busy after CNY auditing the school and preparing an action plan to reduce our electricity usage among other things.

Presentations

Jim and Maunsell, from Year 7, are working on a presentation aimed at encouraging people to bring to school reusable water bottles and fill them at the water fountains rather than buying a new bottle of water every day.

Jennifer, Rhiannon, Jerome and Derek are working on a presentation to encourage people to reduce, reuse and finally recycle paper, plastics and metals.

We are looking forwards to seeing these presentations during year group assemblies and tutor time.

ICT

Chrystina has set up a website for the EAG. Each group will be able to put updates of what they have been doing, photos etc onto the site. Soon there will be a link from the STC web page to our web page, hopefully this will allow parents and other interested people to look at what we are doing and maybe offer their expertise and help.

Justine, David and Jasper are almost finished designing wallpapers that will be place on STC computers with messages such as ‘Turn off lights and air-con when you leave the room” etc. These wallpapers will be installed onto computers after CNY. Thanks must go to Mr. Dickson again for helping these students with finding out the different resolutions of the school computers, this is important in regards to the clarity of the writing and images on the wallpaper.

Simon, Antoni and Aaron are working on something that I do not understand that involves ‘Flash’; I am sure it will be great 

I think that is everything; let me know if I have missed anything, or got anything wrong


Timeline and Aims for the next 5 weeks…
All meetings are in room 256 unless otherwise stated.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
11th – 15th 1) All Year 12 students to meet @1.45pm.
2) Year 11 business group to meet and begin planning their marketing campaign. Fact-finding to meet @ 1.40pm. Vehicular emissions to meet @ 1.20pm 1) FairTrade group meet @ 1.20pm to begin planning for International FT day.
Year 11 business group to present their marketing campaign @ 1.40pm.
18th – 22nd 1)Year 12’s to help with the canteen’s new protocols.
2) Marketing of organic strawberries



Fact-finding to meet @ 1.40pm.
25th – 29th 1) Orders for strawberries to be taken from students during afternoon break. Rooftop garden @ 1.40 International Fair Trade Day Fact-finding to meet @ 1.40pm.
3rd – 7th 10% Initiative @ 1.20pm
10th – 14th
17th

Two new projects…
10% Initiative:
We need a group of students to spear head this project. The aim is to reduce our electricity consumption at STC by 10% over one year. This will involve prompting the project amongst the STC community and being proactive in encourage people to actively work towards the goal of a 10% reduction! If you are interested please let me know. I would like to start this group off with a meeting on Monday the 3rd of March at 1.20pm.

Second hand items: We would like to organise a collection of quality second hand items such as blankets, clothes and possibly older school resources that are no longer in use at STC. The idea is to liaise with Crossroads International (www.crossroads.org.hk), supported by Kingsley and Tasman houses, and find out what items they are in need of for their shipments that go all over the world to help people in need due to natural disasters, war etc. If you are interested in helping out with this new group please email me. We will need people to advertise around the school what items are needed and coordinate collection of items.



Individual group messages:

Presentations: Jim, Maunsell, Jennifer, Rhiannon, Jerome and Derek please discuss amongst yourselves when you will meet to work on your presentations and let me know.

ICT: David and Jasper: please let me know how you are going with the wallpapers and when you will be ready to install them onto computers.

Rooftop garden: we need to think of a new strategy to encourage people to bring in cuttings or another way of getting plants for very little cost  Email me your ideas!