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Keep Our Island Beautiful: Eco-Education in Schools

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Help Cyprus find its direction while bringing your ideas to life!
letsmakecyprusgreen letsmakecyprusgreen       4 comments    Created Date: 07/05/2020
Let's Make Cyprus Green
Let's Make Cyprus Green

Proposal code: Pusula / Ππούσουλας-2020-05-120

Eco-education in schools with the creation of a Downloadable Educational Package for Students and Teachers designed to encourage students to get involved and learn more about environmental issues.

Cyprus is often described as the crown jewel of the Mediterranean, with pristine waters, diverse natural landscapes and year-round good weather. Cyprus can be a beautiful place to live, but is now facing an increasingly challenging problem: Trash.

According to the April 2019 Environmental Implementation Review - a report by the European Commission published in April 2019 - Cyprus has a serious waste production and management problem.

  • Cyprus produces 640 kilos of municipal waste per capita per year, far higher than the EU average of 482 kilos;
  • Only 16% of its municipal waste is recycled, compared to an EU-wide average 46%;
  • Only 2.3% of the waste produced is reused, compared to an EU average of 11.7%;
  • The majority of all municipal waste, 76%, is disposed in landfills, more than three times higher in comparison to the European average of 24%

Unfortunately, much of this waste ends up as trash on the sides of roads, parks, beaches and lastly in the sea, destroying both the natural beauty of the island and harming marine life.

Trash is also having a negative effect on tourism, which has been greatly hit by the recent pandemic. Our proposal’s main intention will be to conserve our island’s main attractions and facilitate a rebound in tourism prosperity. Conserving the environment and maintaining our island’s beauty is essential to attract more visitors to Cyprus.

Local cleanups have taken place regularly, many by members of Let’s Make Cyprus Green, but we strongly believe that education and prevention is the best way to make a sustainable impact. We need to reach young people, who care passionately about theenvironment and will take up the baton of environmental responsibility and inspire others.

 

Our proposal

We aim to enhance eco-education in Cyprus schools with a Downloadable Educational Package for Students and Teachers. This multimedia package will be designed to encourage school students to learn more about eco-issues so they grow to be environmentally conscious, and consider the effects of their behaviours and purchases. This package will be free to all Cyprus public and private schools.

It will include:

  • A multilingual educational programme for three age groups (ages 4–8, 9-13, 14-18)

Sections: 

- Background on Plastics and Why Recycling Plastic is Not the Answer; 

- Dangers of Waste;

- Consequences of Littering for Humans and Wildlife; 

- Upcycling;

- How to Conduct a Community Cleanup - which teachers can use as a guide for a beach, park, or nature reserve cleanup field trip.

  • ​It will include ideas for hands-on classroom activities aimed to raise awareness, including activities that:

- mimic marine animal entanglement; 

- demonstrate the breakdown of plastic in the ocean;

- show the difficulties of removing microplastics from the ocean;  

- upcycling waste to create new items and public art displays; 

- thought-provoking social media campaigns; 

- crosswords and word searches with environmental terms and definitions; 

  • The educational package will be accompanied by printable material like:

- Litter tracker;

- Cleanup risk assessment;

- Letter to parents concerning the cleanup and its purpose;

- Fun quizzes;

- Informative and attractive posters to us in the school.

  • Animated and live-action videos for the classroom or on social media to expand the program’s reach.

 

Why vote for our proposal

 

  • We want to promote the 4 Rs of waste management Refuse, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. 
  • We want to reach the young population of Cyprus so that they will:

- Reduce the waste they produce e.g. by switching to a reusable bottle or lunchbox at school;

- Increase the Reuse of waste e.g. by composting;

- Increase Recycling at school and at home;

- Participate in at least one clean-up;

  • We would like to reach all the young population of Cyprus - more than 100,000 children from the ages of 4-18 in both the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities.
  • Effectiveness of the programme can be measured with before-and-after surveys examining changes in behaviour and with the collection of testimonies including photos and videos taken by the students.

About us

Awarded as the - Best Environmental Awareness NGO - Cyprus 2019 - Let’s Make Cyprus Green is on a mission to spread awareness to the public about the negative human impact on the planet, especially the harm caused by excessive and improper disposal of waste, and the use of plastic. We do this by three steps: 

 

  1. Education - active social media outreach, information campaigns for the public and educational presentations; 
  2. Action - frequent clean-up events, petitioning local authorities, corporations and the government to take action against plastic pollution.
  3. Prevention - promotion of eco-friendly alternatives that help to prevent waste

For more info, please visit www.letsmakecyprusgreen.com

  External video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfYKm_GKmww