Energy - Reduction of impact on Climate Change

• Do an energy audit on the school and aim to reduce electrical consumption and in turn carbon emissions by 5% within a month.
  
  This requires that we obtain the school's electrical usage reports for this purpose. Our group has decided to analyse the first four months of this year (January 2008 to April 2008) as a fairer gauge - using last year's may not be accurate as our school then did not have Year 6 students, and as of 2008, year 6 students are present in our school. We may also have to analyse case studies of energy audits being carried out in Singapore, in order to decide if our action plan would be successful.
  
  The school cleaners may also help in the evaluation of areas where electrical consumption may be reduced - students often leave the classrooms' air-conditioners on when they leave the classrooms, pushing the responsibility of switching them off to the cleaners. Surveys may be conducted amongst the cleaners to determine the actions that need to be carried out.
  
  The usage of air-conditioning and computers in our school will also be included as part of the audit. The library, used extensively by the students, is one of our main focuses for the energy audit. The proportion of students who bring laptops/notebooks to school will also be evaluated.
  
  
• Find areas in the school in which energy can be harvested from and implement solutions that are able to generate electricity from those places.
  
  Energy is converted into other unusable forms when we carry out certain activities. Even something as trivial as using the lift can waste energy. Besides using energy-efficient appliances in such places, such as energy-saving light bulbs and computers that consume less electricity, solutions may also be implemented to regenerate electricity from where possible. For instance, in some discos, pressure pads are placed under the dance floor tiles. When someone steps onto it, electrical energy is generated from his/her movement.
  
   
  
  Courtesy of The 11th Hour by Leonardo DiCaprio.
  
  Similarly, such a concept can be applied to areas where movement takes place very commonly - such as a lift. A dynamo can be attached to the motor, so that whenever it is activated when someone uses it, the energy used to turn the pulley also turns the dynamo, generating electricity. Lifts are commonly used in our school, making it ideal for such a solution to be implemented. Likewise, windmills may also be placed at the roof of our school, so that electricity is generated when wind is present.

Publicity

• Organize activities that would help raise awareness of climate change, such as talks and exhibitions.
  

• Publicize the consequences of not using coins often and promote the frequent use of coins in payment for items (especially canteen food).
  
  The infrequent use of coins in everyday life poses a danger to the Earth - climate change. When coins are left unused at home, more resources would have to be mined. Not only is this harmful to the miners' health, the carbon emissions in transporting the raw materials would also be gargantuan. By encouraging students in our school to use more coins, we can significantly reduce their environmental impact.*

• Hold talks and exhibitions on the waste incineration process in Singapore, and the environmental consequences of increasing refuse generation.

Waste Management

• Hold collection drives for water bottles, newspapers and other recyclables.
  
  Plastic used to be a wonder - its durability compared to paper, and the fact that it is waterproof makes it suitable for many products. Despite the fact that this material was not biodegradable, people still continued to use plastic products. It is vital that we reduce the amount of plastic produced each year - the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced when incinerating garbage from such products are gargantuan. One way in which we can help is to recycle them - and this is what our group intends to do. Collection drives are taking place as I type this - one of the Year 1 classes has collected about 90 plastic bottles within the space of 2 weeks.
  
  
• Set up a compost heap in the school to deal with the food wastage of the school.
  
  Singapore produced about 558,900 tonnes of food waste last year (2007), growing about 6.2% from 2002.¹ According to Mr Lok Kok Heng, supervisor of a mixed rice stall at the High Inn Coffeeshop in Clementi, up to 1kg of meat and vegetables are left over and thrown away every day.² Research conducted by us in our school has indicated that we would output about 8.5 tonnes of food waste each year (80% of which is still edible - rice makes up most of this).³
  
  The waste produced could be used as compost for growing plants in our school: not only would the waste sent out of the school be reduced, the plants in our school would also benefit from the compost produced.

When implemented in the school, these steps help to reinforce the 3 R's (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle), and more people would be aware about the dangers that climate change poses to the world in the present and future. These contribute to the solution of this global crisis.

Climate change has become a real danger to the survival of humankind. We have to slow it down. We have reached the 11th hour, and the choice to save our dying planet is now in our hands.

We are currently trying to get more ideas for this project - creativity is our main focus for this project.

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*Refer to Industrial Visit.

¹Based on measurements by the National Environmental Agency (Singapore).

²Source: The Sunday Times, 18 May 2008, Dumping food that's still good enough to eat?

³Research conducted in NUS High School of Mathematics and Science on 16 May 2008, from 10.30am to 11.40am.