Citibank Taiwan, the RE-THINK Environmental Education Association (重新思考環境教育協會) and the RC Culture and Arts Foundation (RC文化藝術基金會) hope to encourage recycling and waste management by promoting a new board game that uses information from RE-THINK’s “Guidebook of Marine Debris,” which was published online last year.
The game could provide a more fun and relaxed way for children to learn about environmental protection.
Citibank Taiwan head of government affairs and country corporate affairs April Pan (潘玲嬌) said Citibank takes its corporate social responsibilities seriously and would continue to promote consciousness of environment, social and governance issues.
Photo courtesy of Citibank Taiwan
In response to government policies to reduce waste, Citibank hopes to help keep environmental education up-to-date, which is why it collaborated with the RE-THINK foundation in launching the guidebook last year and is hoping reach young people through educational entertainment this year, Pan said.
Citibank and its collaborators created the board game using the guidebook and have introduced it to more than 30 elementary and junior-high schools nationwide this year, she said.
Last year was a memorable one, as the government introduced its reduce plastic waste initiative, while the amount of trash produced hit a record high — since statistics began being kept in 2001 — at 1.132kg per person, Pan said.
The results of a questionnaire issued in September by Citibank Taiwan and RE-THINK found a gap between environmental consciousness and action.
While 70 percent of those who filled out the questionnaire said they have participated in beach-cleaning events that removed hundreds of tonnes of marine waste over two consecutive years, 90 percent of them still generate, on average, three types of single-use plastic waste every day.
While Taiwan’s recycling rate for plastic bottles is 95 percent, the questionnaire showed that 50 percent of respondents did not know what plastic bottles were made out of and that such bottles took years to decompose.
RE-THINK cofounder Jason Huang (黃之揚) said beach clean-ups should be seen as a last resort and more efforts should be devoted toward recycling and reducing waste to have a more visible impact.
The RE-THINK foundation said that it hoped to target the source of waste and trash with education by introducing the public to the concepts of circular economy and recycling.
The foundation is planning to launch a “Recycling Encyclopedia” next year, Huang said.
As it did for the guidebook, the foundation will send questionnaires to the government, corporate sector, recycling stations and members of the public to gather information and compile a clear guide on how to recycle and how to categorize materials for recycling, as well as providing a better understanding of the materials used to manufacture plastic and other waste objects.
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