As part of Green Team, a program of British Council Nepal that was formed back in March 26, 2010 in Nepal, the volunteers attended the environment friendly workshop at British Council on July 22.[break]
The school is one of the Global School Partnership (GSP) Schools of the British Council. The workshop focused on making recycled paper and also eye-catching papers for cards and other decorative items out of recycled paper.
The training was conducted by members of the Green Team who are also staff at the British Council.
Bishwas Gautam, a grade eight student who also attended the workshop, is of the opinion that the training was really appealing as he had initially thought that it would just be like any other lectures from the trainer.
“It was something really different, and we also got a chance to practice on our own.
I learned a lot and now can make decorative items and cards. I’m even planning to teach this method to friends and family back home,” he added.
There are lots of activities and campaigns held time and again to raise awareness about saving the environment. Among such activities, the Green Team is running with the objective of organizing activities that are environment friendly.
Megha Amatya, coordinator of Green Team at British Council, informed that a tool called Environmental Framework Tool (EFT) has been devised to support environmental management across British Council’s overseas operations.
There are five levels, each with ten criteria in the EFT.
Level one sets the foundation for environmental improvement through management preparations and training, and details the preliminary steps required to recognize key environmental impacts which will be addressed at later levels.
Levels two, three and four then implement the management, monitoring and continual improvement of key themes. Level Five finally aims to represent exemplar performances so that the achievement of this level will support such activities.
“We’re working towards achieving the above mentioned levels step by step and help improve our environmental performances. Our vision is to make British Council activities environment friendly and manage the environmental impacts of our office. Also, we teach others to do the same,” Megha added.
She further said that they try to achieve this by reducing the carbon footprint of British Council’s internal activities, reducing the amount of waste produced, and increasing quantity of waste re-used and recycled, saving resources like paper, water, electricity, energy and minimizing the environmental impacts of goods and services purchased.
The Green Team has also organized various activities like reusing paper, energy-saving initiatives like using natural light as far as possible, turning off AC, printers, monitors and fans when not in use, managing plastic and organic waste.
It had also organized paper recycling workshop during February and March where twenty Global School Partnership (GSP) Schools participated where they learned how they can make recycled paper and make decorative items out of it.
Besides that, a competition was also held on World Environment Day in 2010, where the best three ideas on how to save energy were awarded and their ideas were acted upon. Also, the Green Team calculated carbon footprint in 2010/2011 and are still working on reducing the footprint by 3% in 2011/2012.
There were eight students and three teachers who participated in the workshop that was held recently.
Keshab Prasad Parajuli, a teacher from the Karunanidhi Foundation, said that he had tried making recycling papers before but he did not know how to do it the right way.
“After I took the training, I’m confident that it’ll work and I’ll teach the same techniques to other students back home,” he said.
Recycling undoubtedly is a positive initiative in saving the environment. Daily paper and plastic bottles which are recycled is turned into penholders, bookmarks, greetings cards and decorative items.
The same skills and ideas learnt by the students will be carried back home so that the perception of waste will be changed.
Parajuli added that the training has been really effective and he found the procedure to be quite interesting and fruitful.
“We’re also planning to implement these skills in our school and also teach our friends and people in our community. We’ll also encourage students to use recycled papers,” said Parajuli.
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