Youth Take the First Step

Wednesday, 5 November 2008

Youth Take the First Step

Composting Pilot Project Kicks Off in SS14

Composting Pilot Project Kicks Off in SS14

CHANGING tomorrow, today.

Armed with vegetables, cut grass, dried leaves and grounded coffee beans, the neighbourhood youth of SS14 demonstrated their ability to care for Mother Earth.

Supported fully by their parents, the 20 kids below the ages of 15 showed they could take on the responsibility of spearheading a pilot project to start composting kitchen discards and garden refuse in conjunction with Malaysian Environment Week.

With three 660 litre composting bins made available by Subang Jaya State Assemblyman Hannah Yeoh and supported by the Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ), the group will take on the task of collecting kitchen discards and garden refuse like vegetables, fruit peels , tea leaves, cut grass and leaves to be deposited into the ready-made bins.

“Adults, especially the parents of these kids will supervise the collection of materials for the compost bins.”

“We will be monitoring what goes into the bins and also the process of composting,” SS14 Neighborhood Watch interim president T.K. Lee said during the launch of the pilot project.

The event was attended by more than 70 residents from around SS14 and also USJ. Among the VIPs present were Hannah, MPSJ councilor Theresa Ratnam Thong, Selangor Department of Environment director Che Asmah Ibrahim and the officer-in-charge of the SS17 police station Chief Inspector Sulaiman Baputty.

Placed within the confines of the gated back lane of the residential area, the bins and what goes into them will be jointly monitored by the group and their parents.

Hannah in her speech praised the community for taking on such a project.

“It was a casual remark about an idea to get the community involved in composting and the residents here took the challenge.”

“The families involved have showed great interest in this pilot project. They even collectively raised funds to provide t-shirts for the event which we see the kids and adults alike wearing for the launch,” she said, adding that MPSJ and the community would monitor the strengths and weaknesses of the project, which had the potential to be replicated in other areas.

Starbucks Malaysia which has four outlets in Subang Jaya and USJ have also shown their support behind this project by providing the group grounded coffee beans weekly to be mixed into the composting beans.

Monitoring will be undertaken by the adults and the group to keep records of the temperature inside the bins, the rate of decomposition and the quality of the final product, according to Lee.

One of the participants, Teoh Tien Shern, 12 presented a powerpoint on composting and provided an insight into what can be deposited into the bins and what must not go in.

“Compost bins are not rubbish bins. If we do it right, what we will have is fertilizer for our plants and vegetables,” he said, shyly in his first ever public presentation.

Compost harvested from this project will be packed by the group and subsequently sold to residents. Funds raised will go towards sustaining the project and also to fund other projects in the future.

The VIPs were also taken on a short tour of the neighbourhood vegetable gardens which included creepers and leafy vegetables like pumpkin, spinach, sawi, herbal plants and fruit trees along the whole back lane.

For more information on the pilot project or the compost bins, email the editor@sjecho.com.my.