STUDENTS’ CREATION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION – LESS GARBAGE, MORE TREE
That is the message of the young people in the project “Green Life – Redeeming garbage for gifts” organized by Capital students. Green Life is in the top 10 excellent teams of the Start with Kawai contest in 2020. Their project also is the most favorite project at the startup connection fair.
The event of redeeming garbage for gifts of Green Life.
Redeeming garbage for gifts
Green Life is a non-profit environmental organization born in December 2018. The founder is Hoang Quy Binh, a former student of Hanoi University of Science and Technology. During the learning process at university, he realized that the amount of paper, bottles, and batteries of the electronics was used a lot. Such very harmful things, especially electronic batteries will damage the environment. If we can recycle them, we will contribute a lot to environmental protection.
Since then, the project Green Life – Redeeming garbage for gifts was born. The garbage exchange event is launched by youngsters in crowded places with 3-4 activities a month. Participants will collect and exchange recycled waste such as bottles, jars, plastic … for stars. Every 3kg of used paper can be exchanged for 1 star; 5kg of cardboard can be exchanged for 1 star; 10 used batteries can be exchanged for 1 star.
The events of redeeming garbage for gifts of Green Life always attract many youngsters’ participation
After exchanging stars, everyone will freely choose trees, which are rated from 1 star to 10 stars; even beautiful trees are valued at 15 stars. If there are not enough stars, people can pay more money to buy the tree with a rate of 10.000 VNĐ for 1 star.
The trees in the project are mostly small trees, with good vitality such as cactus, succulents which can live in many environments. On average, the group collected 10-15 tons of recycled waste each month.
“After each activity, we will classify the waste. Paper, plastic, and metal are sent to a recycling factory in Hung Yen. Milk cartons are collected by Tetra Pak Company within the framework of Recycling of milk cartons project. Batteries and electronic devices must be specially treated to minimize environmental damage, so all of them will be sent to the Vietnam recycling program. We also encourage and instruct people to collect batteries and bring them to collecting places and to limit the use of plastic bags ”, said Hoang Quy Binh.
Besides, Green life coordinates with organizations, clubs, and book projects to donate the books and notebooks that can be used to the children in the highlands. After nearly a year of implementing this project, about 200 bookcases have been built; and nearly 1,000 books contributed to the community library with the slogan “Borrow books by staking trust” also founded by Hoang Quy Binh.
Sustainable Development
Green Life aims at 3 main goals: encouraging garbage classification and minimizing waste, raising awareness on environmental issues, spread the green lifestyle to the community. Specifically, Green Life aims to the core values: kindness to the environment – responsibility to future generations – community connection.
Attendees of the project were able to plant trees by themselves, contribute to environmental protection.
After nearly 2 years of operation, the project not only helps to form the habit of classifying garbage and throwing waste in the right places but also says no to plastic waste. From the recycled books collected, youngsters in the project can also build many bookshelves in the highlands, bring knowledge to poor children, and spread the awareness of environmental protection in the community.
Small actions, great meanings, Green life – “Redeeming garbage for gifts” has motivated many other youngsters to participate in the project. Nguyen Ngoc Ha, from Hanoi Metropolitan University shared, “I heard about the project through Facebook and actively collected scrap paper and books to exchange for gifts. I also share information about the project with my friends to collect used newspapers, books, notebooks, milk cartons …, then clean and dry them. Such small actions also can contribute to environmental protection ”.
After that, the members of Green life realized that it is possible to maintain the project for a long time, towards sustainable development, so they decided to register in the Starting with Kawai contest in 2020. According to Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh, Project members, Green Life’s activities are social projects and it is possible to create profits and turn around the capital for long-term development.
“In addition to learning about start-up and corporate management from the contest, our group wants to attract investors as well as those concerned about the environment. This activity not only promotes the start-up plan our project members but also brings benefits to the environment and businesses ”, said Thuy Linh.
Currently, Green life is collecting paper, books, newspapers, plastic bottles, milk cartons. Soon, they will focus on dealing with plastic and connect with the recycling factories for processing the plastic. They hope that these activities can help to protect the environment, form awareness of the green lifestyle in the community.
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