SHAH ALAM: The Shah Alam City Council and Fraser & Neave Holdings Bhd (F&N) have joined hands for the 12th time to encourage school students to go green and inculcate recycling habit among them.
City mayor Datuk Ahmad Zaharin Saad today launched the 12th edition of the annual inter-school recycling campaign at the Dataran Merdeka Shah Alam.
Zaharin said some 164 schools, comprising of pre-schools, primary and secondary schools in the city have been invited to participate in the recycling competition, which will run until September this year.
The programme, he said, was a continuous effort by the city council to encourage the public, particularly school students to practice recycling and protect the environment for future generations.
“F&N, the main sponsor of the programme, has collaborated with us to educate the community and promote a recycling culture. This habit should be nurtured from a very young age.
“Early exposure can mould children into beings who care for the environment and who would bring the practice of recycling home,” he told reporters after launching the campaign.
Zaharin noted that the campaign has been a success in the past years, where the number of recycled items collected saw a steady increase. For instance, there was an 18 per cent increment in waste collection from schools last year.
Last year, he said, 143,946 kg of recycled items were collected from participating schools compared to 121,321 kg collected in 2016.
The year 2017 saw a total of 43 schools taking part in the competition, of which six were preschools, 17 primary schools and 20 secondary schools.
“We hope the number of schools participating in this competition will continue to increase this year and would be well-received by both schools and kindergartens.”
Participating schools will be required to collect recyclable items such as paper, aluminium and plastic. Schools with the largest haul of materials collected stand a chance to win special awards.
Zaharin further said a new award category, e-waste (electronic waste) collection has been introduced to this year’s competition, where schools with the heaviest material will bag the prize.
“Besides that, we also have the ‘laman kitar semula’ (recycling site) category open to primary and secondary schools.”
F&N Holdings Bhd corporate affairs manager Cariessa Goh said they hope to see a further increase in recycled items collected because of the newly added category, e-waste.
“It is a new category to encourage the children to think that there is actually a place where they can recycle or put the e-waste to good use,” she added.
The campaign is supported by the Education Ministry and District education offices, F&N Holdings Bhd and Tetra Pak Malaysia Sdn Bhd.
There are seven main prizes for each category- kindergarten, primary and secondary schools.
Primary and secondary schools with the largest recycled items collected stand a chance to win the grand prize of RM2,000 at the end of the campaign, while the top pre-school will bag RM500.
There are also four special awards for the most aluminium, plastic, Tetra Pak and e-waste materials collected. Primary and secondary schools and kindergarten stand a chance to win up to RM700 and RM300 respectively.
While, primary and secondary schools with the best recycle site could win RM800 and a special award for excellent teacher amounts to RM1,000 for each category.
