Liyana Othman Channel NewsAsia 8 Apr 17;
SINGAPORE: Starting next week, students at Chongzheng Primary School will be turning food into fertiliser.
It is the first of 10 primary and secondary schools to have a food waste digester installed, as part of a two-year pilot by the National Environment Agency (NEA) to get the education sector to cut down on food waste.
The project, Love Your Food @ Schools, aims to cultivate the message of reducing food waste from young. Students, staff and canteen operators will have to sort their leftovers into dedicated bins.
The school generates about 17 kilogrammes of food waste every day and all this will be dumped into the digester, which will churn out 2 kilogrammes of compost in just 10 hours. This will be handed out to community groups, for instance, to use in their gardens.
Principal of Chongzheng Primary School, Audrey Wong, said: "We will have a learning journey for all our students to come down to see how food waste can be converted into a resource, and that will encourage them to reduce their food waste."
At the launch on Friday (Apr 7), about 500 students from 30 schools went on an interactive trail to learn more about food waste.
“To achieve a clean and green future, it’s important for everyone, including our youth, to come together to make environmentally friendly behaviour our way of life and champion environmental stewardship," said chief executive officer of NEA Ronnie Tay. "We hope to inspire our youth to make a conscious effort to reduce and recycle their waste.”
The other participating schools are Admiralty Primary School, Anchor Green Primary School, Broadrick Secondary School, Dunman High School, Greendale Primary School, Greenwood Primary School, Hillgrove Secondary School, Nan Hua High and Punggol Primary School.
The schools will be equipped with the food recycling machines by the end of May.
- CNA/xk
