This year at St Edward's College, we decided to focus on the Sustainable Goal of Responsible Production and Consumption which is listed as the 12th goal by the United Nations. Thus we launched our Litter Less Campaign for YRE by investigating how much waste is produced by a single family every week from its shopping and how much of it is made up of extra packaging.
To help with this problematic scourge, an experiment was conducted amongst the students who form part of the Eko-Skola Committee. In total there are around 15 students which make up around 13% of the Middle School Population. Students were asked to monitor the shopping done by their families for a month. They were asked to collect receipts of every time they went shopping and to keep separate the extra packaging from a product that does not include the packaging that contains the product or the product itself. The end result of this experiment was to find out the amount of money spent by average Maltese families in a week and in a month as well as the weight of extra packaging accumulated.
The result was fascinating. Even though we were unable to quantify the amount of waste as some had accidentally recycled it before weighing it, we realized how many products we buy from multinational companies are wrapped in excessive plastics and cardboards. This mini-study led our committee to look more at its surroundings and to observe the amount of litter we have in our streets.
Recently a lot of awareness is going around our social media outlets about clean ups. It is almost a trend to post a #selfie with #trash in the background to show off with your friends that you are cleaning up Malta. As Ghislaine Calleja from Get Trashed Malta commented, "Cleanups have become more popular thanks to the media taking an interest in our work and shareability through social media platforms. This is making the public more aware and conscious of the problem and civil society would in turn like to contribute their time to cleaning up areas in need and deal with the poor waste management in Malta, within their capacity."
Nonetheless, what people are not talking about is how come Malta ended up in this state in the first place. A lot of the extra packaging that we buy without daily shopping ends up on the street. Wrappers, bottle caps, plastic wraps etc... formed the bulk of the waste collected from a residential area in Birgu as part of a Clean Up activity which the Eko-Skola Committee at SEC felt they needed to do.
The students were very excited to embark on this mission to make the area around their school cleaner. They were ambitious and thought they could reach the Birgu Marina in 90 minutes and clean up the whole Triq San Dwardu; however they were mistaken as they barely made it half way down before the time was up and all their garage bags were full. Ms. Calleja from Get Trashed Malta also helped out Eko-Skola Committee in this clean up, "I was quite impressed with the amount and type rubbish dumped all around the fortifications of Cottonera. It actually felt like we were in a mini landfill at a point because there was heaps of trash beneath our feet, some of which was quite bulky and hazardous... Single-use packaging seems to be the biggest problem."
Just outside the school gates, the students strode into a group of bushes where they found and collected a great deal of litter. Many students were surprised at what they found: a glass bottle with a skink living inside of it; a headless Barbie doll; a bag full of dung; broken parts of strollers; and very long metal tubes, where among the surprising pieces of debris found.
The probable crux of the problem regarding all the trash is the fact that the majority of people are too lazy or just simply don't care in the slightest about waste disposal. It is mostly adults who dispose of all this waste as they do not listen to children's recommendations who are learning about sustainable living. In fact the Eko-Skola Committee observed that a lot of the waste was dumped behind high walls and it is not immediately spotted when one goes out for a walk or drives by.
There are many things that people can do at home, in their daily life to reduce waste, such as: buying products with less extra packaging, reuse the packaging if possible, recycle, buy only what you need and inform others around you about these practices. Ms Calleja also urged the Eko-Skola Committee to share this experience with the Local Council of Birgu and to encourage them to put up more signs against littering and bins. To date, the Local Council of Birgu has not yet acknowledged our email about this Clean Up activity nor has it replied to some questions about the matter.
Clean ups are very important and help out a lot with the cleansing of the environment. Every little gesture counts and the Eko-Skola Committee at St Edward's College would like to invite more people to clean up the residential areas around their houses.
Although it took a lot of hard work and effort, this clean up did not manage to clear the whole area. Despite many great efforts, there always seems to be more garbage. It was a commendable effort with many young determined participants striving for a better world.
Special thanks goes to Ghislaine Calleja from Get Trashed Malta who took part in this activity with the Eko-Skola Committee of St Edward's College; for her time and patience even with a follow-up interview