of Plastic Free NIST

GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP AWARD “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” - the journey of Plastic Free NIST

By Kenshin Ueoka, NIST International School

Plastic, though it is treated like disposable trash, is made of non-renewable fossil fuels to be versatile, moisture resistant, durable, flexible, and relatively inexpensive. This incredible material enabled the growth of many areas in our society from construction, industry, packaging for transport, and pharmaceutical and medical applications. However, single-use plastic undermines the potential of this resource as the average plastic is only used for 12 minutes on average while it lasts for several centuries. The benefits provided by the convenient and sanitary nature of plastic do not offset the environmental impact to justify wasting it as disposable plastic. Isn’t it such a waste of precious resources to simply throw it away and let it photodegrade into microplastics that cruise along ocean currents for centuries until it enters the food web?

In early middle school, we saw images of where our conveniently disposed plastics might end up in - the beautiful ocean - suffocating and starving marine species. We explored the statistics and research on the impacts of plastic pollution on the environment and human health. We learned that it is a problem requiring urgent and creative solutions. Yet, plastics seemed to still be everywhere on campus as we were so used to their existence in our daily lives. We realized that immediate actions needed to be taken. Therefore, we spearheaded the movement to eliminate plastics in our school community as a team of driven middle schoolers putting our learning into real actions. After formal meetings and discussions with the school leadership team and community members towards ‘practicing what we preach’, we are proud to have successfully removed singleused plastics from our campus, and that the NIST cafeteria outlets provide paper straws and biodegradable cups made from cassava as sustainable alternatives. We continue to explore possibilities to add even more eco friendly options such as rice straws. Plastic Free NIST maintains a significant presence in our school community, along with many other student-led service groups and social enterprises.

As its name suggests, the Plastic Free NIST service group has aimed to eliminate the consumption of single-use plastic products since 2015. Our first projects focused on promoting alternatives to plastic items so that reducing environmental impact and raising awareness was possible without compromising the convenience of our community members. One of our main projects includes partnering and supporting a bamboo straw social enterprise, Bamboo Lao. Bamboo Lao works with and empowers villagers in a rural village in Laos, with their deep breadth of local knowledge and skills transforming beautiful bamboo plants into sustainable alternatives for plastic straws. As of today, we’ve sold 6,500 straws, which could be reused 100 to 150 times. Through this, we are able to work towards our global goals of reducing plastic pollution and supporting developing communities at the same time. In this way, we can achieve environmental sustainability interconnected with the wellbeing and job opportunities of local communities.

At first, our goal was to achieve a ‘Plastic Free NIST’. However, as we developed our understanding of the various systems surrounding this issue, our focus grew. We wanted to transform our relationship with scarce natural resources from a linear ‘produce, consume, dispose of, forget’ process to a more circular model that enables waste products to re-enter the system to be recycled and upcycled into new and improved products. designs of plastic upcycling machines online for free and people around the world are already setting up collection points and recycling spaces. After researching various options, we chose to purchase the machines from a company in Austria called ‘plasticpreneur’ for its high quality and safety standards. Plastic Free NIST is joining this initiative, and our “Precious Plastic NIST” project will positively impact the learning environment towards sustainability. As NIST is closely working with a network of service-focused and passionate international schools in Thailand, this project can inspire and empower other students to initiate similar projects, allowing impact to radiate towards the greater community.

An element of this project involves setting up a plastic collection center in our school. In working towards this, we also partnered with the sustainability team at Indorama Ventures, a petrochemical company that is willing to accept certain types of plastic waste from schools and companies in Bangkok for recycling. We contacted various schools nearby and companies to join in the project. While PET plastic bottles go to Indorama Ventures, other types of plastic such as PP, HDPE, and LDPE will be upcycled by the machines at NIST.

Through a collaborative and creative approach, we can begin to reengineer the plastic waste management flow in our Bangkok community to shift out of our toxic relationship with single-use disposable plastic.

Image resources PreciousPlasticBasicMachines,preciousplastic.com/ solutions/machines/basic.html. “The Lifecycle of Plastics.” WWF, www.wwf.org.au/ news/blogs/the-lifecycle-of-plastics#gs.d503ya