|
RP’s commitment to the environment
Republic Polytechnic (RP) is an Institute of Higher Learning (IHL) which is
committed to the prevention of pollution and conservation of resources to ensure
a sustainable environment. RP is the winner of the prestigious Building and
Construction Authority’s Green Mark Platinum Award in 2006. RP’s campus is the
first building project in Singapore to make use of a purpose built Thermal
Energy Storage (TES) System designed to reduce its energy bill substantially.
It also has an active energy and water conservation programme and a waste
management programme in place. Last but not the least, RP is designed to be a
paperless campus.
Nurturing a generation of
environmentally friendly youths
Here at RP, we hope to nurture a generation of environmentally friendly youths.
We encourage RP youths to take a proactive approach towards environmental
activism. We hope to encourage youth activism in environment related projects
and empower our young people to do their part for the environment.
Putting their passion for the
environment into ACTION!
Over the last 4 months, students from the Chiron Club, Student Union and
Student Ambassadors have been busy planning for the series of
environment related activities leading up to Clean and Green Week (CGW) 2006.
Two key pre-CGW
events were carried out to help RP youths realize that their actions can
make a difference to the environment. Through these exciting activities, we hope
that the RP youths will feel empowered to do their part for the environment!
RP’s 10,000 plastic bottles challenge
The Chiron Club management committee would
like to thank all RP students and staff who came forward to support us readily
with their bottles! The bottles were literally pouring in throughout the entire
collection period (6- 31 Oct). In addition, the event also received much
coverage from the media. This created much excitement for the students involved
as they were interviewed on campus by The Straits Times, Channel News Asia,
Channel 8, Channel U, Berita Harian, Mediacorp News Radio 93.8FM and many
others.
As a result of the overwhelming support
from students and staff, we are happy to announce that we have exceeded our
target by 100% and collected a grand total of 20,305 bottles!
"There are many things youths and the
community can do to cut energy wastage”, said Derek Ho, Chairman of the CGW2006
Launch Committee. “Because we have a consumer driven “throwaway” culture, the
waste we generate is sometimes not obvious, For example, how many of us think
about the energy that goes into the production of the waste we throw away?
Through this project and CGW2006, we hope to make drive home the message that it
is easy to do our part for the environment and it need not compromise our
existing lifestyles. ” he added.
Through the collection and construction
exercise, it is hoped that the youths would appreciate the amount of raw
materials and energy that go into the production of such an item, which many
simply discard after use without a thought. Hopefully it would then impress
upon them the need to take steps to correct this wasteful consumer-driven
culture.
Vote against litter movement (VAL)
Through this
meaningful activity, RP students have come to realize
that they can take an active role to "educate" other youths when it comes to
environmental consciousness, and that everyone has a role to play in
keeping Singapore litter-free. Instead of
distributing more pamphlets with anti-littering messages (and thus contributing
to the problem), RP students embarked on a project that takes a reverse approach
– get the pedestrians to ‘vote’ for a litter-free environment with the
pamphlets, and thus collect back these pamphlets (for recycling) instead of
having them end up on our pavements.
Almost 250 RP
students hit the streets of Singapore from 28-29 October to ‘protest’ against
littering. Run by the RP Student Ambassadors and supported by the RP Student
Union and the International Students’ Club, this project allowed the Republicans
to act as youth activists, to share the Green message with the public, and more
importantly, to do something about an issue which is of great concern to many.
Our students
were seen asking pedestrians to ‘vote’ against litter by depositing their
unwanted pamphlets into special ‘ballot boxes’. Armed with green t-shirts and
bandannas, the students targeted high traffic pedestrian areas across six
locations – at the Tangs Underpass, the Suntec City overhead bridge, outside the
Northpoint Mall, Somerset MRT, Sim Lim Square and Causeway Point. At the
end of the two-day ‘protest’, eighteen boxes of ‘votes’ were collected.
| 
