Rachel, Year 12, Century Park Campus

Every year at YCIS, during the same week as Earth Day, we hold an “Environment Week” at our Century Park Campus which includes various fun activities that are planned to help raise money to plant trees in Inner Mongolia for the organisation “Roots and Shoots”. This year, we had an activity planned for each day of the week: Meatless Monday, Book Swap Tuesday, Bake Sale Wednesday, Tree Cycling Thursday, and Green Dress Day Friday. In addition to all of these events, the “Eco Gazette” was also sold for RMB 10 yuan a copy throughout the week, featuring interesting articles and interviews written by our Eco Team members. 

Meatless Monday was a newly planned event, inspired by the global movement where once a week meat is not eaten to reduce meat consumption for personal health and for the well-being of our planet. The meals in the cafeteria were completely transformed with meat being omitted. On Tuesday we had a book swap, another newly planned event, which was an innovative idea for people to bring in their old books to swap with something new to read, encouraging everyone to reuse.

A week of fundraising would not be complete without a bake sale, which we held on Wednesday. Many volunteers from all year levels baked sweet treats to be sold, and this was an eagerly anticipated event as we all love sugary delicacies. Thursday was Tree Cycling, an annual house competition where kilos of paper are gathered to be recycled in an effort to promote recycling. This year we managed to bring in a total of 309.5kg of paper!

To end Environment Week we had Green Dress Day on Friday (this year’s Earth Day), which is an annual tradition at YCIS. This year, there were many students who wore green wigs to show their passion for the Earth and the environment. As it was Earth Day, I also reminded myself to be careful of my use of water, to turn off the lights when they were not needed, and to always remember to do the three ‘R’s—‘Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle’!