Earth Day clean-up: But where's the litter?
By Yohanna Abdullah
IT WAS a cleanathon, but there was not much litter to pick up.
After combing East Coast Park for cans, food wrappers, bottles and other litter yesterday, many of the 1,700 Raffles Girls Secondary School pupils taking part In their school’s cleanathon started bagging dead leaves and twigs.
The event was one of many held in Singapore to mark Earth Day, which falls today.
There were also drawing contests, an exhibition, and even plant giveaways at a special screening of the "environment-friendly" film Green Card.
In the RGS cleanathon, the cleaning itself took less than an hour, with each of the 48 classes covering a small area of the park between the food centre and the recreation centre.
Pupil Wu Suming 13, who started picking up dead leaves after just 15 minutes, said: "There’s nothing left to pick up!"
She added: "I guess It’s good that after so many reminders on how the environment can get really dirty, people don’t litter much any more."
Although it was only the school’s second year celebrating Earth Day, the pupils are very aware of environmental problems, said its principal, Mrs Carmee Lim.
This is reflected in poems, pledges, and cheers created for the day, she said.
Younger children shopping at Forum Galleria yesterday learned to be "Friends of the Earth" from displays and lightboxes featuring Singapore’s wildlife.
Some of them took part in a poster-drawing contest. A "$1 for the Earth" fund-raising drive for the Malayan Nature Society was also held.
At the Marina Promenade, the Marina Jaycees held another poster-drawing contest for children on the theme of "Earth Our Home".
Also to mark Earth Day, Warner Bros yesterday gave away 1,000 seats and plants at a special screening of the romantic comedy Green Card, at Orchard cinema.
In the film, Gerard Depardieu plays a French musician who marries an American horticulturist, Bronte Parrish, (Andie MacDowell), to get a green card, or permanent resident status in the US.
Said one of the guests at the screening, Singapore’s ambassador-at-large Professor Tommy Kob, who is the 1992 chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development:
"It’s basically a love story, but the character Bronte and her colleagues, who helped create lush gardens in the blighted and depressed inner city areas, convey an important environmental message."
Today, Marina Mandarin’s general manager Jean Wasser will don his overalls to plant a traveler's palm — a symbolic reminder that "the fate of the Earth we live in lies in our hands". The hotel already uses energy-saving bulbs at the porch on its front driveway, recycled paper in its offices, and paper bags and boxes at the Mandarin Pastry Shop.
McDonald’s restaurants here will also be going for environment-friendly packaging soon as part of its worldwide "Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle" campaign.
Paper wraps for burgers are in while foam boxes are out; and brown paper bags will be used In future, since chlorine bleaching In the making of white paper adds to water pollution.
Source : The Straits Times, April 22 1991
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