Term 3 Magazine April 2021

Page 26

L ELAORBNAI LN C G GI T I Z E N S H I P

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP

GRAD’21 CAS PROJECT TACKLES WASTE WITH RESCUED GLASS By Divyansh Jain and and Abhishek Pawa, Year 13 students

T

he entire Community Action Service (CAS) project started with a group of friends passionate about working with real businesses that are actively involved in tackling global issues. We thought the most prevalent problem in this part of the world was improving the quality of waste mitigation for various single-use items. We found a non-profit social enterprise, Rescued Glass, that works to reduce the impact of glass bottles by upcycling them to create high quality home decor. They aim to create something beautiful that would impact the local community at a much larger scale than a personal project. They do this by creating a movement of circular disposal of obsolete glass products by minimising the volume that is sent to landfills. It is astonishing to learn that glass bottles have a larger carbon footprint to manufacture than plastic bottles of the same mass. Furthermore, with glass being easily and almost infinitely recyclable, it is only logical to participate in this movement. We directly witnessed, and learned, how it is possible to creatively re-engineer glass bottles and repurpose them into unique and stylish household decor such as candles, vases and glasses. As a social enterprise, Rescued Glass works with Second Chance Bangkok and Green Samurai for the production of their packaging. These businesses are social organisations

that help the local community in their own respective ways. Second Chance recycles secondhand clothing to create the packaging for the individual products, which is further manufactured from workers who live in underprivileged communities such as the one in Khlong Toei. Green Samurai recycles plastic pellets to create larger packaging for the more stylish products such as the high-in-demand wine decanters. Since the opening of school early this year, we have managed to promote this movement within our Secondary School, with a group of 30 actively participating young students and aspiring entrepreneurs. This has not only allowed younger students to directly experience the workings of local businesses, but also allowed us, Senior students, to develop and enhance our communication and leadership skills. We have learnt valuable lessons with e-commerce by creating a functional website, along with selling products through large online retailers such as Shopee and Lazada. We plan to further develop and increase our involvement in the local community with aspiring students at Bangkok Patana School hoping that, together, we can reduce the figure of 28 billion glass bottles and jars that fill our landfills annually.

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• Bangkok Patana School


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