By Nancy Nais
KUCHING, Aug 10: Students, schools and young generations have been encouraged to generate innovative and creative ideas to reduce, reuse and recycle waste while promoting awareness on environmental sustainability.
Speaking at the Greenovation School Programme today, Trienekens Sarawak Sdn Bhd Group chief executive officer (CEO) Stephen Chin said it can be done through the creation of up-cycled products or designs that can help minimised environment footprint and conserve precious natural resources in the state.
“As modern day consumers, we tend to get rid of the items we no longer need without much thought about the impacts we may cause to the environment. Some of the items need not necessarily end up as waste but given a new purpose, it can have renewed lifespan,” he emphasised.
In conjunction with their 20th anniversary celebration, Trienekens recently organised the inter-school level environmental programme.
About 44 teams from 25 schools participated in the competition, where they were given a platform to develop innovative and creative ideas based on the 3R (reduce, reuse ad recycle) concept.
Winners of the competition were presented with cash prizes up to RM1,500 as well as trophies and certificates.
Chin added that one of the special features on the programme was mentorship segment where both students and teachers had the opportunity to learn and get advise from industry experts such as Swinburne University of Technology, University Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) and Lim Kok Wing Institute of Creative Technology.
Trienekens also worked with other government agencies namely Ministry of Local Government and Housing, Kuching North City Commission (DBKU), Padawan Municipal Council (MPP), Serian District Council (SDC), Natural Resources and Environmental Board (NREB) and Department of Environment (DOE).
Meanwhile, political secretary to the Chief Minister Tan Kai commended all the students and teachers for their participation, saying greater involvement was needed from the young generation to promote environmental sustainability among their peers.
“As we all know, the population in our state is growing every year and it spurs various aspects of development and economic activities such as building of houses and infrastructures. It also indicates an increase in consumption rate, habits and inevitable escalating generation of wastes,” he said.
He added that the Ministry of Local Government and Housing were committed in formulating policies to manage these developments and ensuring that those already in place be actively implemented and enforced by various level of the government agencies.
“The 3R concept is one of the ways to address waste pollution and conserve our natural resources. Our local councils are actively involved in promoting this practice among the community while cleanliness is an issue we continue to push forward consistently to prevent diseases and maintain excellent level of public health,” he pointed out.
However, Tan also reminded the community that they cannot solely depend on authorities to take action on health and cleanliness issues such as illegal dumping because it required the attention and participation of every level of the society.— DayakDaily
