Abu Dhabi students introduced to waste management through Enviro-spellathon

Through its widely-received and popular environmental education programme called the Enviro-spellathon, EAD will introduce this concept of managing waste to 12-13 year old students in Government and Private schools in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

The Enviro-spellathon is an environmental education programme that has gone beyond the Emirate and effectively brought environmental awareness, on the local environment, into the classroom of thousands of school children around the UAE. It has already captured the imagination of students and introduced them to the UAE¡¦s marine environment, desert wildlife and water resources.

Today, the Enviro-spellathon is being launched for the academic year 2006/2007 at the Sheraton Resort in Abu Dhabi.

¡§We believed and still believe that the new generation, empowered with environmental awareness, can and will make a difference in their future. Today, the number of students who have been exposed to the Enviro-spellathon totals more than 361,000 students, since the programme's inception! Imagine how better aware these students are, in the environmental sense, due to the programme,¡¨ said Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, Director of Emirates Wildlife Society/ World Wide Fund for Nature Project Office, who spoke on behalf of the Environment Agency ¡V Abu Dhabi.

She expressed gratitude to the various organizations that have been a part of this programme' success story. She thanked Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Western Region Educational Zones for their cooperation, as well as the school administrators and coordinators for their hardworking efforts. Al Mubarak also thanked the programme¡¦s sponsor Shell Abu Dhabi, who she said has always been eager to come forward and support any environmental education initiative. She added that the programme would have not been able to reach out to tens of thousands of students without your full and continued support.

In his address during the launch ceremony, Dr. Mohammed Defrawi, Managing Director of Shell Abu Dhabi, said, ¡§We are very proud to have played a role in raising environmental awareness among young students, whom we hope will be able to spread this message to their families and communities. Shell is very much aware of the environmental impact on our lives and this is represented in our guidelines of Sustainable Development, which means that the economic, social and environmental dimensions in our lives, will have an impact on tomorrow¡¦s generations.¡¨

The new level being introduced in the Enviro-spellathon this year will teach students about waste, its different sources and why it is important to manage it properly. It will enrich them with tips on what they can do at home, at school and in their community to help the UAE¡¦s waste problem. It offers a Classroom Waste Audit and encourages the students to put it to use. It also provides students with waste facts and alerts them to how long commonly used items take to decompose.