Department of Science – Waste Management Campaign October 2021

The Department of Science from the School of Science and Technology organized the Secondary Waste Management Campaign in October 2021 in collaboration with The Science Circus Pacific (SCP), Australian National University. The funding was provided under the SCP programme.

Over 200 high school students across Fiji registered to be part of this campaign. The project was officially launched on the 19th of October, 2021 by His Excellency Mr John Feakes, the Australian High Commissioner to Fiji. Following the launch, two days of online workshops and trainings were conducted by the Science Department (UniFiji), SCP – ANU and industry partners: Lautoka City Council, Coca Cola Euro Pacific Partners, South Pacific Waste Recyclers, and Waste Recyclers Fiji Pte Limited.

The workshops and training, allowed the participants get acquainted with some waste management alternatives at home such as reducing, reusing, recycling, upcycling, repurpose, repair, and re-gifting. Innovative waste sorting demonstrations and hands-on activities on the use of recycled household wastes were also conducted to encourage creativity with wastes at the household level and to maximize the usage of household wastes. This was in line with the theme of the waste management campaign.

The aim of the Campaign was to educate the secondary school students in Fiji about the importance of proper waste management practices and encourage them to innovatively recycle wastes (such as PET bottles, paper, organics etc.). The latter was part of competitions whereby students were encouraged to create posters and videos demonstrating innovative waste recycling practices.

The video and poster competitions were in two categories (junior and senior) according to their respective localities with the theme “waste creators to waste managers“. The two localities were: i) areas where garbage collection services are provided by municipal councils (GCMC), and ii) areas where no garbage collection services are provided including peri-urban, informal settlements, rural, maritime, and farming communities (NGCMC).

The reason for this demarcation is that the waste disposal methods are different in these localities, and students from the respective localities were required to implement innovative waste management methods. The entries were then strictly judged by the SoST-Science and SCP-ANU Team together and the winners (1st, 2nd, 3rd and complementary) for the two competitions were identified. To appreciate the student participation and to stimulate innovative ideas demonstrated, all winners will be provided with lucrative prizes including tablets, power banks, 2 TB hard Drives, and ear pieces. The winners are as follows:

Tiktok video links for the poster winners: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZSeCsg6kT/