A section of students from Tropical High School in Kabalagala, Kampala under their club dubbed the School Environment Club, have invented modernized dustbins from plastic bottles.
The invented dustbins are affordable, durable, and sustainable according to these students.
“We had a problem of improper disposal of garbage and sat down as a team the last term, we first developed two dustbins from papers but realized that they get ton faster then came up with this idea with the help of our teacher,” Deo Olwenyi from Senior 2, the Chairperson of the Club told DaParrot on Saturday.
“We have a capacity of making one dustbin per term but due to time factor we have so far made two, when we return next year, we shall add others,” he added.
Olwenyi, like others, says that he is now a transformed and enthusiastic environmentalist an achievement he attributes to their patron and his friend who persuaded him to enter the club.
“It was time to go home when the environment club had its Wednesday meetings, my friend convinced me that this club’s ambitions will help me in the future and I listened, since that day I have had numerous conversations with club leaders and I’m now deep into environmental activism,” Olwenyi highlighted.
According to Olwenyi, the club exercises given to them by their leaders have greatly guided them to be creative and to have teamwork on conserving the environment both at the school premises and in the surrounding neighborhood.
“When one of our leaders told us to make a prototype of something that can conserve the environment we joined hands and we came up with an idea of making charcoal brocades and dustbins out of plastic bottles” Olwenyi noted.
With their mission of “Green Growth and Sustainability” and a vision of leaving no one behind, Raising Gabdho Foundation a social enterprise is currently aiming at spreading the gospel of conserving the environment by empowering youth.
Nalwoga Pauline a S2 student also a member of the environment club noted that with the skills gained so far, she hopes to get the courage of speaking about environment conservation amongst her fellow youth outside the school.
Moses Ochad, the club patron and a career teacher said that since the overall objective of this club was to maintain hygiene and sanitation of the school, they couldn’t resist when Raising Gabdho brought up the proposal of creating awareness amongst their learners on how to maintain and conserve the environment.
“We introduced this club and we are planning to have it forever in fact we have an idea of moving outside to the community to sensitize them about the dangers of pollution hopefully next year” Ochard emphasized.
Ochard also added that come next term, students in this club will assemble dustbins for all the 12 classrooms at the school and this is to be done using used plastic bottles.
Mugisa Warren the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer noted that the Raising Gabdho foundation realized that when they educate children about environmental issues, the biggest effect on the environment will be achieved.
“We are currently implementing our environment awareness strategy in two schools where we help students to create a difference after identifying the problem,” Mugisa added.
He also noted that they also have environmental clubs with LCs and churches with the aim of tailoring solutions for ecological problems.
RGF used a community design approach, where the school identified the environmental problems it was facing and proposed solutions. Today the school has developed the third prototype of the plastic dustbin. We hope to have a ready product by the time we have the fifth prototype,” he said.
The project he said is being implemented with support from Dan Church Aid in partnership with the United High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR( and the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).
Raising Gabdho is a social enterprise that aims to accelerate clean, accessible energy and sustainable energy for vulnerable communities through innovations and benchmarking good practices.
