Students to challenge environmental experts

WSP Environment & Energy and Blue Stream Environmental Technology have teamed up with Raffles International School to engage Year 5 students on the current situation regarding waste management in Dubai on the 19th March at Raffles School.

The analogy of debt and bad management by some towards finance can be aptly applied to attitudes towards waste. An Environmental-Fiscal text book may state that environmental overspending in the present doesn't create problems in the past, it creates problems in the future. In this case our children's future.

Recycling companies throughout the UAE are recognising how undervalued recycling is within the Gulf States. They see the resources they collect not as waste but as valuable materials, and their separation at source can represent significant fiscal savings for the companies who use them and for the global environment which we live in. They have high hopes that people will now start to pay more attention to these savings as risk management and the environmental agenda gains more momentum.

WSP will present the Year 5's with a picture of Dubai's current waste strategy as seen through the eyes of a multi-national and multi-regional Environmental engineering consultancy, introducing and expanding on the principals of the three R's (reduce, reuse and recycle). Before WSP outlines their current solutions for Dubai students will get the opportunity to put forward their ideas.

"Instead of testing the students, they will have the opportunity to challenge us with their direct questions and innovative ideas. There will be challenging times ahead and we believe that the solution will include these students and their challenging ideas."

John Roosen - Technical Director, WSP E&E

A design competition is current underway at Raffles School. The students have been tasked with creating a blueprint for a simple recycling unit which is simple to use and effective in communicating its purpose to passers-by. A winning design will be chosen from a panel of judges from WSP and Raffles School. This design may be manufactured into a working model and presented to the winning student designer and Raffles School for use in their campus grounds.

Mr Loats and Mr. Harman, Raffles School Year 5 teachers are delighted with WSP's involvement in the project as this represents a great way to engage the students and make them stakeholders in the environmental future of their neighbourhoods. Through the students, awareness is brought home to family members and friends multiplying the effectiveness of the environmental message.

Parents of the students will be invited in to the school to join in the debate at the end of the day and to have their questions answered by the experts.

While the plans for increasing Dubai's recycling capacity may reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill, a holistic resourcing solution will have to address issues of how, as residents, we reduce or reuse the materials which we consume. This, as the Year 5 students know, is the basis of the 3 R's.

So why in these increasingly pressured finical times are companies adopting these Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) schemes and put time into associating with Year 5 students?

Brent Ridgard, Managing Director of WSP Environment & Energy reflects on the concerns of his staff towards environmental issues and the apparent levels of public awareness.

As a leading global environmental consultancy working across a range of specialist environmental subject areas we can't but help to notice the seriousness of the situation we are all in regarding the irreversible global degradation of our natural resources. It is this lack of awareness regarding these issues that allows them to continue and it would be irresponsible for us not to share what we have learnt.

With the environmental clock ticking for these issues the question remains, how much more time can we waste before we get reducing, reusing and recycling beyond rhetoric?

Teacher / Principal - The environment units have great scope for student learning, from studying and understanding issues within our home, the wider community and the world.

Grade 5 teachers Mr. Loats and Mr. Harman decided with the move to the Primary Years Program (PYP) curriculum next academic year to develop the environmental units of "Watch Your Step" and "Someone Else Will Pick It Up'