Students practise simple steps of unfolding the four corners of used cartons, flattening them, sticking covers on carton openings and placing them into dustbins for collection.— Photo courtesy of Tetra Pak

The separation of used cartons for recycling has gained positive results at schools and households in Ha Noi when about 125 tonnes of used cartons were collected in the last two months of 2020.

This is the result of a carton collecting competition launched in November 2020 with an aim to encourage Ha Noi’s nearly 1 million primary school students and parents to separate waste at school and home.

“This competition’s goal is to instill the habit of waste separation at home and school and at the same time to improve students’ awareness about environmental protection. We are happy with the initial results of the competition which has successfully collected 125 tonnes of used cartons in less than two months, twice as many as the number of cartons collected in the previous months. This shows that the competition has expanded its impacts and we hope that students, parents and teachers will keep engaged in this meaningful activity,” said Ly Quynh Trang, Director of Sustainability, Tetra Pak Vietnam.

The competition is part of a 2-year School Recycling Programme jointly implemented by Tetra Pak in collaboration with Ha Noi’s education and training, environment and natural resources departments.

The programme encourages students, teachers and parents to separate waste at school and home through many contests, such as “Top Carton Collector”, “Most clean & tidy UBC Corner” and “Most inspirational speaker”. Schools like Kim Chung, Tan Mai, Ngoc Hoa primary schools and Son Ca, Thinh Liet, Hoa My kindergartens have collected from 200kg to more than 780kg of used cartons.

Contests also helped strengthen primary students’ knowledge about the importance of segregating waste at home and school. Winners will be presented with automatic water purifiers as prizes given by Tetra Pak.

In the programme, schoolchildren were instructed on the simple steps of unfolding the four corners of used cartons, flattening them, sticking covers on carton openings and placing them into dustbins for collection. All used cartons collected from the competition will be transported to Dong Tien Package and Paper Factory for recycling into useful products such as eco-roofing, notebooks and paper bags. — VNS