Save The Earth

Recycling Day is a yearly event held in Singapore. During this special day, exhibitions and games were held at Community clubs and town centres for everyone to have fun. This year (2007) was no exception.

The event Recycling Day 2007 was held at Ang Mo Kio Hub (Other places like Punggol CC also held this activity, yet in a much smaller scale.) This trip’s primary objective was to get to learn more about recycling and to enhance the quality of our project. . Wei Xiang had the digital camera so he took the photos featured here, Cheng Jie participated in some of the activities and Joseph asked about several organizations such as Tetra Pak Jurong Pte Ltd and others to learn more about these companies. These were the so called “roles” that day. There was many people, different stalls from different schools and organizations all there for 1 purpose- to promote recycling.

There were many activities to promote the recycled products and recycling itself. Many fun and interesting games were held. As long as you participate in these games, and we stand to win a prize. Other stalls were set up by companies included Nokia and HP. People can pass their unwanted hand phones or ink cartages to the people-in-charge at the booth to recycle them. Contests were also conducted, such as the Preschooler colouring contest for young kids to have fun. Art works with the subject “Environmentalism” were also put up for voting. Different schools submitted different art pieces for voting in each category. All these were done to raise awareness about Recycling. Reusable Bags that were designed specifically for the theme of recycling were put on display too. An interesting activity was the “carbon test” by the Nokia booth. The test would ask you questions such as how many times do you take car or how often do you walk to your destination. Then it would show you the carbon level you produced. For Joseph, the results were: If everyone on the Earth was like him, we would need 1.4 Earths. This activity is rather fun as it will show you how much more effort do you need to put in to Save The Earth.

The different organizations include Tetra Pak Jurong Pte Ltd, etc. They put up banners and exhibition booths. All these were to create a global, or at least on a national level, awareness on the importance of recycling objects, and also to educate people on different styles of recycling and of course, the importance to stop global warming. We will also get to know the process of recycling etc. All these help us a lot in the research. These organizations also set up stalls to sell items such as model cars or trishaws made from tin cans and others unwanted materials. The tin cans were cut into shapes and sizes to create these cool models. They were on sale. Other items include the sale of reusable bags with a whole pack (6 packets) of packet drinks inside or only the reusable bag itself. Another organization carried out so called “mass recycling”, where residents brought their want-to-be-recycled items there for recycling. They can exchange food and market vouchers too as rewards! Beside its booth was a recycling bin, where everyone could throw his or her tin cans or plastic bottles inside for recycling purposes.

Afterwards, a skit conducted by a secondary school was also held. A Q&A session was also held before the skit, residents could get prizes by answering the questions correctly. The answers were found on the banners and exhibition booths in the fair.

As for the 3 of us who had been there, we had a fun time there working together with our group mates and also to find out more about recycling. In short, we enjoyed the trip, though we had little time, around only 3 hours to do walk around and participate in the activities. So if there is another chance, perhaps it will be fun to go again next year.

Even if we only went to the Ang Mo Kio hub’s recycling day fair, there were also others different fairs with different activities at other places. Examples of other activities held were balloon sculpturing, performances by people and coin recycling activities, all also aimed at promoting Recycling.

References:
"Recycling Day 2007." National Environmental Agency. National Environmental Agency. 7 Jan 2008 <http://app.nea.gov.sg/cms/htdocs/article.asp?pid=2582>.