Students learn to live Styrofoam - free lives

A group of high school students, out hiking in a mountain park, break for lunch, sitting on the grass and heaping out their food and drinks into Styrofoam plates and cups.

After eating, they leave the dishes behind and continue on their hike.

“(Styrofoam dishes) are made to be disposable, so why not just throw it away once we’re done using it?” says one of students with a laugh.

A moment later, and the same students are seen weakening under a heat wave. On the verge of fainting, they are saved when another student collects the Styrofoam dishes.

Satirical, but the scene, performed Sunday by students at Ancol Dreamland Park in North Jakarta, managed to charm the hundreds in attendance.

Running on the central theme of “Styrofoam-Free Jakarta”, the event, jointly organized by the Indonesian Biodiversity Foundation (Kehati) and Ancol operator PT Pembangunan Jaya Ancol, was aimed at rasing awareness of the dangers of Styrofoam use in daily life.

Rina Kusuma, from Kehati, said she hoped the campaign would highlight to students the impact of Styrofoam on global warming and health.

“Most students are familiar with Styrofoam, which they encounter in abundance at their school canteen,” she said.

“Through this campaign, we want to at least make them stop using Styrofoam and pass on the message to their friends.”

To ensure the sustainability of the campaign, Rina said the foundation was also working with members
of the Jakarta Teens Go Green (TGG) community to publicize the campaign.

Founded by Kehati in 2007, TGG is a community for high school students with a strong concern for environmental preservation.

TGG member Annisa Salsabil, 16, a student at state vocational school No. 4 in Cilincing, North , said she was happy to participate in the event.

The 11th-grader, showing off a poster about the importance of managing domestic waste to prevent flooding in the Jakarta city, said it was a easy for her to get her school friends to stop using styrofoam, simply because most of them were boys.

Styrofoam waste poses a serious environmental problem because it cannot be recycled and takes thousands of years to decompose.

In Jakarta, it is often incinerated, but this only serves to release the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and also carbon monoxide, which is harmful to the human respiratory system.

The Jakarta Post