One of the schools is co-leading with another 70 schools in Bahrain a nationwide waste-reduction campaign "MyCleanPlate”, which has been initiated by Bahraini youth and which is officially supported by the Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs and the Ministry of Education. They launched the campaign in September on the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste. The objective is to promote a culture of responsible food consumption, change individual food consumption behaviour and to reduce the overall amount of food wasted in Bahrain. The long-term goal is to achieve inclusion of responsible food consumption in the Ministry of Education’s environmental curriculum by 2025. The school is collaborating with a restaurant chain to study food waste. Their first findings are that in a month half a ton of edible food is being wasted that could feed 236 people in hunger. They are also establishing a protocol for responsible food consumption. Students are actively engaged in the social media campaign by creating contents.
The other school focuses its work on tacking e-waste through a school-wide campaign labelled “The forgotten fortune: e-waste campaign”. Teachers first introduced students to the Litter Less Campaign and launched a competition for the best name and logo for their school-based campaign. A team of students from tenth grade manage the campaign with the support of their teachers. They have organized field trips to the national e-waste management and recycling company and the Bahraini Supreme Council for the Environment to study the issue. They also started a social media campaign through the school’s communication channels and by creating dedicated accounts on Instagram and TikTok. Their objective is to create awareness within the community of the dangers of e-waste on the environment and how to reduce e-waste. They are engaging the entire school community and beyond through competitions and events. For example, they organized a high-school wide meeting on e-waste to which they invited representatives from civil society and private sector to share information and ideas to tackle e-waste. They are currently engaging the entire school in a competition on collecting e-waste. Older students are teaching younger students about e-waste and younger students are using e-waste to make art pieces. Bahrain’s largest national telecommunications company is financing the competitions and agreed to sharing their campaign through their social media channels. The students have also engaged in beach clean ups and some students participated in a trip to Iceland where they studied approaches to waste management and sustainability.
