Beachcombers
MARY ROSE GASMIER catches up with students of Loyang Secondary School, as they clean up their adopted beach at Pasir Ris.
LOYANG SECONDARY SCHOOL’S 1,300 students take their social responsibilities pretty seriously.
Classes trudge down every week to clean up Pasir Ris Beach, their adopted beach, says principal Mrs A. Ganapathy, 50. The programme started in earnest last January, following the Environment Ministry’s adopt a beach/park campaign.
Cleaning up is hard work in the blistering sun on the open beach, which is just a 10-minute walk from the school. At the beach, the students used little pink plastic bags as "gloves" for picking up litter and large black trash bags to hold it.
Each group of five has to fill one trash-bag or do an hour’s clean-up. At a recent outing, English teacher Mrs Gita Nair, 31, stood guard over a mound of schoolbags, as the students started work. Some wandered far off along the beach or into the mangrove trees nearby.
The students kept their sense of humour and went about their work cheerfully despite the heat.
Ben Lau, 15, and his group from Secondary 3D were filling their bag with drink cans, newspapers and other rubbish, studiously ignoring a bloated puffer fish that the waves kept sweeping towards them. Asked if he actually enjoyed beach-cleaning, Ben said frankly: "If it’s not every day, just once in a while, okay lah."
But did his parents approve of this traipsing about, cleaning up filth left by inconsiderate picnickers, when he could have been doing homework?
"My parents know about this cleaning and they encourage me. They say it’s a good thing to keep the country clean," replied Ben.
To prove it, he turned around, stepped gingerly forward and picked up the puffed-up puffer. The other hand clamped to his nose, he shoved the repulsive object into the bag.
Meanwhile, Ben’s classmate Yan Jin Fa, 15, was busy doing a waltz with the waves, stepping forward to pick up a can and skipping back before the waves sloshed over his shoes. Minutes later, he triumphantly brandished the can.
"I don’t really like doing this, but as a Singaporean, never mind, lah, we must do our part. It’s doing something good, cleaning up the beach," said Jin Fa.
Sec 3C prefect Siti Hawa Bee and her Muslim friends worked super fast, collecting three bags of rubbish in just half an hour. A hot but cheerful Siti explained:
"We’re fasting, so we get tired, especially in this hot sun. But this is our adopted beach, so we clean it."
Each week, the school’s students collect a small mountain of trash: flotsam from the sea and picnic litter — paper plates and cups, drink cans, food cartons and bottles, though the students are told not to collect broken bottles to avoid injury.
Two team leaders then record the day’s work in a diary supplied by the Environment Ministry, said Mrs Ganapathy.
She said: "Most of us take the environment for granted, but I wanted to instill in them an awareness of the environment. We had slogan writing competitions, poster competitions and daily quizzes on the subject."
The environmental awareness programme also includes a recycling station set up in the school.
Students contribute discards from home to the station, a decorated stand made out of recycled materials, with bins for paper, metals, plastics and paper. "Waste not waste" says a slogan on the station.
Source : The Straits Times, March 30, 1992
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