National, 18th September, 2019: In a bid to raise awareness on plastic pollution especially amongst marine life and take a sustainable approach towards solving it, students from Sri Sri Academy in Kolkata have made the best of plastic waste that accumulated in their school premises. As part of their ‘Trash Installation’ initiative, the students have installed a dolphin statue made out of plastic as well as a vertical garden within the school premises.
The foyer of Sri Sri Academy in Kolkata is now adorned with an art installation titled ‘Dolphin in Peril’. This installation by the students of the school was made completely out of the plastic waste accumulated in and around the school. A team of enthusiastic Gen-Z students (Aditri, Yuthika, Aishani, Gaurav, Rajneesh, Vishal, Manjari) with support from the school staff, teachers, mentors and helpers built this over a period of one month. The students hope to create awareness about the harmful effects that plastic that is irresponsibly disposed of by humans has on the innocent marine life. The idea for working on this project triggered off in the students’ minds during their recent participation in the FutureSake Sustainable Habitats Program.
The students believe that the efficient management of our shared natural resources and the way we dispose of toxic waste and pollutants are important aspects to be aware of if we have to make progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 12, Responsible Consumption & Production. “Plastic can cause great harm to the environment as well as the marine life as it is undegradable. With the help of our mentors and teachers we were able to make the installation and plan to make similar ones in the future,” Aditri said.
Having created the installation to raise awareness, the students also wanted to demonstrate a unique idea for solving the used plastic problem. Over 400 middle-school students participated in an activity that involved using old plastic bottles to build a vertical garden in the school corridors. As part of the FutureSake program, some of the students had also visited an urban-farming centre in Singapore and that brief immersion was enough to pique their curiosity to come back and implement this project!
Commenting this initiative that the students took, Mr Sampreeth Reddy Samala, CEO, Worldview Education, one of India’s leading experiential learning companies which runs the FutureSake program said, “It was heart-warming to witness the students at Sri Sri Academy take an enthusiastic stance and initiative post participation in our program. Through our program, we want to trigger off curiosity and a creative thought process in Gen-Z to solve the challenges to building Sustainable Habitats and these are great examples of students using their learning to create awareness and take action. This is of course only the first step and we hope these young students take on bigger challenges and Solve them. We believe Gen-Z can influence large scale change by participating in global issues and by transforming their schools, homes & communities into Primary Engines of Societal Change.”
The FutureSake program by Worldview Education is a youth-centred program around Sustainable Habitats, delivered in different cities around the world. In the program, cities such as Singapore, San Francisco, Hyderabad, Bengaluru are used as case-studies as well as classrooms. Sri Sri Academy had a group of students participating in the FutureSake program in October last year. The school has received an overwhelmingly positive response to the student’s initiative and plans to further encourage them to take on other projects around various global issues!
