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Young Chinese Actively Engaged in Environmental Protection
A waste batteries recycling project in Beijing's high schools and primary schools has ended with a remarkable result: 3 million waste batteries have been collected in the past 15 months.
"Those kids showed great enthusiasm for this project," said Jia Feng, an official with the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) that sponsored the project. Jia added that the waste batteries they collected weighed 55 tons, about 40 percent of the total gleaned in the city.
Environmental protection and pollution control in the urban area are the issues of top concern for Chinese aged between 16-25, according to a latest nationwide survey done by the Urban Survey Organization of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The survey revealed that 5.4 percent of the young people chose environmental protection as their top concern among 12 other issues such as income and housing. Another 7.3 percent said that pollution control in the urban area is their top concern, the rate being much higher than their parents.
This can be attributed to the better education about environmental protection than any time in the past, said Jia. Environmental knowledge has become part of the curricula in primary and middle schools.
"I also regarded the waste batteries recycling project as a course to develop children's consciousness of environmental protection," said Zheng Daling, a Beijing primary school teacher.
Another primary school teacher Wang Weidong said that the kids not only took an active part in this project but also got their parents involved, and even their neighbors and colleagues of their parents.
The project proved that environmental protection education on children will also have positive effect on grown-ups, which is expected to help raise social consciousness on this issue, said Jia.
The SEPA has promoted a number of projects for education recently, including a poster designing contest, a non-profit advertisement designing contest and a ten-episode TV program.
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