Earth Day is celebrated yearly on April 22 and this year it was a special one for all pupils at St Joseph School Sliema. It was a day jam-packed with environment-related activities organised by our Ekoskola committee.

As part of our school’s participation in the LitterLess Campaign and our campaign title was ‘Material Matters – Dispose Wisely’ so the Ekoskola committee tried to combine the litterless theme with other Earth Day activities.

On Earth Day, each class was given a colour associated with a particular flower and we wore T-shirts to school in the colour assigned to our class. For example, the Grade 5 girls wore purple to represent the Maltese Rock-Centaury, better known as widnet il-baħar, the national flower of the Maltese islands. The Grade 6 girls wore white to represent the Arum Lily flower, also known as buqari.

During the day, each class discussed the importance of conservation of our environment and why we should do our part to take care of the world. Together with our classmates and teachers, we discussed eco-friendly practices we can put into practice. We went over the importance of refusing to purchase things we do not need.

We also learned about the three Rs – reducing, reusing and recycling waste. Other eco-friendly activities such as upcycling and reusing material for crafts were also shared and discussed.

In order to link this day to our litterless campaign, we learned about sorting and disposing waste in the correct bins. The Ekoskola committee members prepared a poster and bin labels for each class. These were stuck in a prominent place in all our junior school classes to help and remind us to dispose of waste correctly.

During this special day, our school introduced environment- friendly initiatives for all the school, from Pre-Grade up to Grade 6, namely:

No more paper envelopes – In order to limit the use of paper envelopes, the Ekoskola committee decided to introduce reusable envelopes to be used to hand in money for fundraising activities and notes. We gave a money pocket to each girl in our school. A campaign video about this, uploaded at https://youtu.be/0Orowc4Pv0c, was prepared by one of the Ekoskola committee members. We estimate that we have reduced around 2kg of paper envelopes each time we collect funds for school activities.

Saying no to plastic bags; saying yes to cloth bags – The school provided us with cloth bags to collect bottle caps instead of putting them in plastic bags. On Earth Day we designed our cloth bags with beautiful environment pictures like a nature scene or animals, and to write powerful environment-related messages and slogans. Cloth bags are much better than plastic bags because they are durable, can be reused and are less harmful to the environment. They can be used to store items or to carry things when going shopping. The Ekoskola committee prepared another campaign video about this, available at https://youtu.be/qnuBknghEx0.  

The world is nicer when it is greener: a planting activity – Another fun activity we did was planting. Some students brought their own bell-pepper seeds. Teachers also gave us different seeds of Maltese indigenous plants which were donated to us by the ‘Grow 10 Trees’ organisation. We planted our seeds in reusable milk carton pots. Planting is not only a fun, educational activity but having more plants and trees means having more oxygen.  This helps our environment to be greener.

The earth is getting dangerously warm due to pollution, and if we don’t do something fast, it will be incredibly hard to get the planet back to its normal state. To avoid destruction of our planet we all need to do our part and take care of the environment. We need to think of sustainable practices and choose to act consciously in favour of the environment. We need to stop throwing waste into the sea and in the countryside and make sure to use the correct bins when recycling. Let us learn how to refuse buying things we don’t need, to reduce, reuse and recycle. Let us take care of our trees, and whenever possible, plant more trees, plants and flowers too to make the world greener.

Everyone can make a difference, including you!

Jade Housley, 11, and Julia Gatt Taliana, 10, attend St Joseph Junior School, Sliema. The article was submitted as part of the school’s participation in the LitterLess Campaign.