A primary school with imaginative recycling ideas, a foundation that is stopping plastic reaching the ocean and a political party that built the country’s first plastic road.
These were the recipients of awards scooped by Eastern Cape eco-warriors who took top honours at the Eco-Logic Awards.
Named the gold winner in the Recycling and Waste Management category at the virtual awards ceremony hosted by Enviropedia on Monday, Kabega Park Primary has firmly planted itself in the crusade to protect the environment.
The school’s green activities include robust recycling initiatives, donating money to wildlife rehabilitation, raising awareness of recycling in their community and spearheading various other recycling activities.
The school’s head of natural science and technology, Wikus Olivier, said its green initiatives started eight years ago when a competition was run to see which class could collect the most recyclables, with the winning class awarded McDonald’s burgers.
“We didn’t expect the response, over 1,000 black bags of recyclable materials were collected ... and the project just grew from there,” Olivier said.
As first time winners of an Eco-Logic Award — which recognises the ecologically beneficial products, services, businesses, communities and people who take effective action to protect and preserve the environment — Olivier said the accolade provided pupils with recognition for their efforts.
Olivier said the school-run recycling and other environmental projects had branched out to the community with parents, local businesses and other institutions becoming increasingly involved in various initiatives.
“Any income we generate from the recycling projects and awards won goes directly into making the school greener,” Olivier said.
The schools has in the past replaced benches with plastic ones, installed solar geysers and is in the process of installing solar panels on the roof of the school building.
Other ways the school is educating pupils about waste management and recycling is by hosting “green days” where pupils either dress up as superheroes with outfits made from recyclable items to “black and white days” where outfits are made from old newspapers.
Other activities include cleaning the Baakens Valley area as well as beach clean-ups which has catapulted the school into being awarded a Wessa International Flag, Platinum 1 status.
Olivier and fellow teacher and co-ordinator of the eco-committee at school, Dr Adéle Botha, were also awarded as best dressed for their Eco-Warriors outfit, created using only recyclable items.
Winning gold in the Eco-Youth Award category was Giving Them Wings Foundation CEO and founder Siya Ntsumpa.
Ntsumpa started the foundation six years ago with the aim to create food security and sustainable living projects for schools in the Bay.
The award looked at the recycling programme spearheaded by Ntsumpa which saw schools in Motherwell creating recycling clubs and other environmental projects with plastic to prevent plastic from ending up in the oceans.
The DA also walked away with two awards including a gold award in the Eco-Innovation category and Silver in the Eco-Build category for the innovative plastic road, also known as the eco-friendly road, which was built as a pilot project in Jeffreys Bay in the DA-run Kouga Municipality.
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