Not to be bleak, but each passing day we dig a deeper and deeper hole for ourselves by killing the planet and creating heaps of waste. However, not all hope is lost. Let’s look at what Grade 10 students at Western Academy of Beijing (WAB), aka my classmates, created during their Design Sustainability unit as sustainable solutions to help save the planet.

It should be noted that students created projects tailored to specific categories: Media/Graphics, Workshop, Kitchen, and Textiles/Fashion. So, without further ado, here are six WAB students and their solutions for sustainability.

App for Renting Clothes

First up, we have Rune Knappskog. He wanted to create his project in relation to media because he believes it can make a bigger impact on a greater audience. “If you create something physical, it can only be seen by your classmates. If you make something using software, anyone with the internet can access it.”

For his project, Knappskog created a prototype of an app where people can rent out clothes to one another. “So, let’s say you want a cool shirt for one occasion,” he says. “Instead of buying a shirt and then never using it again, you can rent it for a day or two using this app.” By doing so, he claims that ginormous amounts of water will be preserved, as well as prevent toxic chemicals from being used in the making of fast fashion. What makes his product unique is that “it is about renting, rather than buying,” he says. “There are already many apps and websites where you can buy used stuff, and while this reduces buying fast fashion, renting clothes also reduces the trend of “buying clothes just for you to only wear once.”

Graphics for Bug Food

Next up, we have Lucas Hsu. For his project, he posed as a graphic designer and created a brand identity for insect snacks. “Entomophagy, the act of eating insects, utilizes less water and land resources, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, is rich in nutritional value, and could potentially be an accessible food alternative in underdeveloped or developing countries,” he states. “To effectively showcase the brand and the goals to the customer, I will be developing a brand identity that is both visually impactful and connected to our brand values.” By creating a brand style guide, he hopes to guide designers in the process of making branded products such as advertisements, websites, or packaging.

Shoes out of Car Seats

In the fashion category, we have Deboshree Bhattacharya. For her project, she made shoes out of leather cover seats from old, disposed cars. “With fast fashion growing immensely popular among the middle-class audience, it has also become a problem because of its carbon emissions which is further impacting the environment,” she comments. “These shoes will be up-cycled, recycled, reusable, and affordable even for middle-class audiences. Despite all of these qualities, the shoes will remain a luxury concept in order to remain appealing to a diverse range of customers.”

Repurposing Old Jeans

Another student who made her project based on the fashion industry is Sophie Yi. She made a formal gown from old jeans that don’t fit her anymore. “For me, buying clothes is the most tangible form of overconsumption,” she states. “My body has stopped growing, but I have not lost the habit of buying new clothes every few weeks.” With her project, she intends to inspire others to create a new purpose out of their old clothes that they have stopped wearing by showing them that “up-cycling is fun, and materials are not a restriction—everyday garments such as denim can be revamped to form something completely different,” hence the denim jeans being turned into a formal dress. With her project, Yi aims to combat the issue of overconsumption and hopes to “provide a sustainable alternative for future consumption.”

Bed Set from Old Garments

Now we have Momo Yang and Grace Zhao, also in the fashion/textile category. Even though donating clothes are a good option, “there are some garments that couldn’t be worn again.” Instead of throwing these fabrics away, the duo worked together to collect these old garments and turned them into a stuffed animal pillow and blanket set. On how their product helps the planet, she says, “the product reduces textile waste, hence it reduces what goes into landfills so factories could minimize the use of natural resources to dispose [of]the textile.” Their product is aimed at children and teenagers who are into cute items. “Our product looks visually pleasing with stuffed animal faces, and on the practical side, it is convenient with multiple usages, that it can be a pillow or a blanket.”

Pasta Made with Locally Sourced Ingredients

Moving on to the kitchen, we have Olivia Chen, who chose to work in this category because there are many various things you can do, and simply because she liked to cook, so it seemed natural to do so.

For her project, Chen created pasta with tomato sauce from scratch using locally purchased ingredients rather than internationally imported ones. “Especially for pasta dishes, people tend to buy products that are internationally imported or canned produce that is very processed,” she says. “By buying locally and starting from scratch, I can help reduce the damage of the transport and the waste of canned products.” When asked where she bought the ingredients, she says that she purchased them from a local market in Shunyi. If you’re interested in recreating her pasta, try her recipe!

KEEP READING: Shifting Schools Towards Sustainability: Tips From People Who Made It Happen

Images: courtesy of the students, Unsplash

What is Earth Hour?

Started in 2007 by the World Wildlife Federation and their partners, Earth Hour began in Sydney Australia as a symbolic lights-out event and has grown to engage millions of people in more than 180 countries and territories.

It’s simple. Switch off your non-essential lights for an hour on Saturday, from 8.30-9.30pm your time and share it on your social media channels to bring attention to climate change and spark global conversations on protecting nature. Use hashtags like #EarthHour and #Connect2Earth to be part of the community.

You can do this with a candlelight dinner, camp out in your living room, have a themed movie night where you watch documentaries like Our Planet or the Wild Kratts cartoon, paint with glow in the dark neon paint – there are so many ways to open up the discussion with your kids. You can find more ideas here.

Share with us what you did or plan to do for Earth Hour by sending a short video or photo to editor@beijing-kids.com! And don’t forget to follow our WeChat Channel to watch our explainer video:

KEEP READING: Ching Shih 鄭氏: Pirate or Entrepreneur?

Photos: Courtesy of Earth Hour

Some topics are hard for even grown-ups to grasp. We may tackle Plastic-Free Challenges and more sustainable eating practices as individuals, but reversing climate change is still a major fight on multiple fronts.

But that’s for adults, right? Kids can’t do anything to save the Earth. They’re just kids.

That’s not what the Global Climate Change Action Project thinks. They created a worldwide project that “aims to change students’ behavior and societies’ mindset concerning climate change and environmental threats through education.” Students from all over the world participated in a six-week Climate Action Project which culminated in reporting on their results during a live webinar on the evening of November 5, Beijing time.

Directly after the organizers’ introductory remarks and a rousing speech by none other than nature historian Sir David Attenborough, two Keystone Academy fourth-grade students Amy Y. and Jeffrey Z. presented their own classes’ findings on tangible ways they can change the way we treat the planet, no matter how small.

Amy and Jeffrey began by defining climate change and investigating how it directly affects their lives in Beijing. With the guidance of their English teacher Mr. Reuben Bathgate and through comparing data, they realized the average annual temperature in Beijing has increased over recent years.

But again, the question arose. What can children do? Amy and Jeffrey’s class looked at their school life first and found a few different ways that students can help, which they described in detail to their live audience at this event:

• Meat-less Monday in the cafeteria because factory farming counts for 1/3 of carbon emissions annually,
• Check that all classrooms have paper recycling bins next to printers and trash receptacles. (My kids were watching with me and said they would ask their school about this as well).
• Their school has a greenhouse and gardens, where students are able to see how the cycle of life works in real-time: plants feed fish, fish feed plants, they can create compost to help feed their gardens, which in turn cultivates worms in compost to feed the fish.
• Many teachers switched to using Seesaw, Padlet, and Microsoft Teams to reduce paper consumption
• They are in the process of researching the viability of installing solar panels on school roofs, working with administrations across the departments to see how feasible it is.
• Students also shared how they felt about food wastage, and are still working to find solutions to this problem.

Both students were excellent representatives of the Beijing school community. It was clear they understood the topic, their material, and their investigations thoroughly. The organizers of the event emphasized accessibility for all involved, and students Amy and Jeffrey seamlessly moved between English and Mandarin in their presentation.

Their Grade 4 English teacher who facilitated the project, Mr. Reuben Bathgate was also quite proud of his students’ achievements:

It was a privilege to participate in the Global Climate Change Action project culminating webinar alongside such legends as Sir David Attenborough and Dr Jane Goodall. My students and I have come to admire them both so much as we learned about climate change and how they have dedicated their lives to taking care of our planet and the creatures that share it with us. We enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with other students from around the world and learn how climate change has affected where they live and what they are trying to do to help make a difference. The most important thing we learned is that this is not a start-stop school project. Just because the unit has finished we won’t stop thinking about what we can do, and we won’t stop taking small actions each day, to make a positive impact on climate change and to help to save our planet for future generations.

Congratulations to Keystone Academy and their fourth-grade climate scientists for a — worldwide — job well done!

KEEP READING: Is Plastic-Free Possible for Parents? Involve Your Children so They Understand

Photos: Climate Action Project website

“Everything led in the most natural way, it seems now, to that magical invitation to Africa in 1957 … My mission was to get close to the chimpanzees, to live among them, to be accepted.”

These words are spoken by renowned primatologist and conservationist, Dr. Jane Goodall DBE, in the opening moments of her eponymous documentary. The film, which was produced by National Geographic in 2017 and pieced together from over 100 hours of footage shot in the 1960s, thought lost to time until it was rediscovered in 2014, offers a rare glimpse into the early life and career of one of the most fascinating and groundbreaking scientists of the 20th century. 

Dr. Goodall’s pioneering research into the behavior of primates, and specifically, chimpanzees, constitutes one of the largest leaps in how we understand our distant relatives, since the earth-shattering breakthroughs of Darwin himself. And what made this titan of wildlife particularly compelling was not only her willingness to tread deep into uncharted territories of scientific inquiry, but into uncharted territories of the natural world, having lived amongst her subjects for long stretches at a time while gaining their trust and earning their respect.

Moreover, her first foray into the jungles of Gombe, Tanzania was not as a trained professional carrying out her life’s work, but as secretary to a scientist who brought Dr. Goodall along due to her passion for animals and the fact that she could provide insights untainted by the dominant scientific theories of the time.

Needless to say, she was a young woman in a man’s world, which was further obscured by its relocation to the remote wilderness. Yet she went on, in no uncertain terms, to completely revolutionize humanity.

And so it is that when you get to be in the presence of a figure such as Dr. Goodall, you are truly in the presence of all that is great and, in the purest sense of the word, inspiring, about the human spirit. Therefore, when over 600 folks, young and old, from across Beijing, packed into Harrow Beijing’s auditorium this past Wednesday (Nov 13) for “An Evening with Jane,” the excitement, reverence, and admiration was palpable.

The event — which was organized by the British Chamber of Commerce in China, and supported by Roots and Shoots, ConocoPhillips, the British Embassy, Beijing Field Studies, the Jane Goodall Institute, and Harrow Beijing — featured a screening of the documentary, some powerful words from the guest of honor, and a Q & A. 

Touching on everything from raising her own child on the plains of the Serengeti and readjusting to life in Britain after months on assignment, to being chased by buffalo and the time her students were kidnapped by a rebel faction in the Congo, this was one lecture that certainly had it all. And despite the fact that Dr. Goodall talked about the catastrophic effects of climate change, and the drastic measures that we must take to ensure the preservation of natural worlds for generations to come, she spoke with a sense of optimism, perhaps buoyed by the fact that there were so many young people in attendance, who were entirely rapt by her presence and words.

Likewise, when asked about the discrimination she faced as a woman in the field, Dr. Goodall struck a lighthearted tone. Citing an oft-repeated story about people claiming at the time that, given her lack of scientific credentials, and all but ignoring the amount of dedicated hours she put into her work, she was only famous because of her legs, the audience member posed the question, “Does this piss you off? And what other obstacles have you faced in your career because of your gender?”

In reply, Dr. Goodall stated that, “The legs thing is kind of funny actually, because if someone is told today, ‘you’re only famous because of your legs,’ that’s really insulting and disgusting. But when people said, ‘she’s only famous because of [National] Geographic covers and her legs, I thought, well if that’s going to give me money to do my research, thank you legs!” Adding, “You have to admit, they were pretty good legs,” to the audience’s delight.

And therein lies the beauty and the heart of who Dr. Goodall is. No matter the challenges she faced as a woman, no matter the challenges she faced in alien and hostile environments, and no matter the challenges we face today as stewards of a rapidly deteriorating planet, with a little bit of humor, a little bit of patience, and a whole lot of determination, our abilities to shift paradigms, both collectively and individually, is always within reach. 

To get involved with Dr. Goodall’s organization, Roots and Shoots, click here.

Photos: British Chamber of Commerce

The very nature of the phrase, ‘Global Warming,’ makes it sound like an insurmountable problem that little ol’ me and little ol’ you could never hope to solve on our own. After all, the globe is a pretty big place, and to address an issue that covers the entirety of it seems well out of the scope of our private little bubbles. Nevertheless, if this problem is ever to be resolved, or even confronted, we must not get bogged down in the enormity of the planet as a whole.

To look at a landfill, you don’t see one large mass of trash, but a collection of singular objects that all come together and effectively become that mass of trash. Thus, it follows that we do in fact bear individual responsibility for each piece of waste that ends up there. And so it is that through a coordinated effort of personal and peer accountability, we can make small changes that ultimately add up to a big impact.

In an effort to illustrate this fact, in a very real and concrete way, 3006 students across six different campuses within the Dulwich College International (DCI) network teamed up to win — that’s right, win! — a Guinness World Record title for “Largest Environmental Sustainability Lesson (multiple venues)”.

On October 30, students from Dulwich College Shanghai, Dulwich College Beijing, Dulwich College Suzhou, Dulwich International High School Suzhou, Dehong Beijing, and Dehong Shanghai, packed into their respective auditoriums and gyms, equipped with live streams of the other schools, to partake in a lesson, Living a Sustainable Lifestyle, which “demonstrated the importance of environmental protection and conveyed the message that each person can and should effect tangible positive change.”

For their part, Dulwich College Beijing (DCB) had more than 1000 students from Years 3 to 11 occupying the Wodehouse and Edward Alleyn Theatres, as well as the Sports Hall.

The lesson, which was co-developed by students and faculty alike, operated much the same way any other classroom would, albeit this one was much larger. Nevertheless, it kicked off with a small introduction to the idea of sustainability followed by a video of famed documentarian, Sir David Attenborough, explaining the power of individual, sustainable acts, and ended with some small and large group discussions which urged the kids to make “sustainability pledges,” or those choices that the students and their teachers could work into their everyday lives to lessen their carbon footprints.

All of this was conducted using a website that was designed and developed by Isaac L., a Year 11 student at DCB. In a press release about the event, Isaac L. said that his “previous experiences of being the main web developer at HackDulwich, DCI’s hackathon, provided me with the opportunity and confidence to now be on the web development team of the homepage of the Largest Environmental Sustainability Lesson.” He continued, “I love using the skills I’ve learnt to bridge my passions for STEAM and web development with an initiative that brings attention to the climate crisis, a massive problem facing our species.”

The lesson culminated in the launch of “Sustainable November,” a month-long campaign that challenges sustainable living across DCI schools. In effect, “Students, staff and parents are encouraged to stay committed to the pledges they made as part of the lesson and support one another in building habits to make tangible and permanent change.”

Photos: Pixabay, courtesy of Dulwich College Beijing

The representatives are meeting to discuss questions such as: “Will billions of dollars of aid pledged in the Copenhagen Accord be honored? Will China, the world’s biggest polluter, step forward as an unlikely climate hero? Will the multiple "gigatonne gap" between safe levels of atmospheric CO2 and pledged reductions finally be acknowledged?”

It’s almost been a year since Copenhagen, notes a recent ABC article. During this period, we’ve seen both the physical and political impacts of climate change, as environmental disasters around the world have been accompanied by a range of significant political shifts.

The political outcomes on climate, however, have been mixed. President Obama failed to get climate legislation through the US senate, despite a sharp increase in renewable energy investment globally, including most notably in China. Australia has a new Prime Minister, a new Minister for Climate Change, a new Climate Change Committee, as well as a renewed call to set a price on carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, at the grassroots level, commentators have observed a growing sense of urgency across the world on climate change – people are now prepared to take real action.

So, what’s the bottom line? “There has been progress since Copenhagen. Perhaps not as far as many would have liked. But we’ve moved forward,” says the ABC article. “Further, the ingredients are there for strong international action. Tianjin is an opportunity to pick up the UN process and take steps towards the treaty that is needed.”