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Students pledge to put an end to plastics

Dubai - The students, all in the age group of 8-16 years, were creative and undertook innovative initiatives to spread awareness.

Goumbook, a social enterprise that aims to promote sustainability in the UAE, has launched a nationwide pilot awareness campaign called Drop It Youth (DIY) urging students to rally against single-use plastic.
Tatiana Antonelli Abella, founder of Goumbook, said: "The campaign is dedicated to empowering students to run their own campaign and raise awareness around their community, encourage their family, their school and the wider community to reduce and remove all single-use plastic from their everyday life.
"We picked 25 students ambassadors for DIY campaign who were responsible to spread the word about single-use plastic pollution, its harmful effects on the environment and on ways to reduce it. After spreading awareness about the issue through their talks, discussions, the students asked people to log on to the DIY website and make a pledge to reduce plastic consumption in their own way - some pledged not to use plastic bottled water, while others pledged they won't use straws, etc. We were amazed to see that the 25 students were able to get around 2,000 pledges registered online from across the UAE in just three months."
By mentioning which ambassador convinced them to take that pledge, users contribute to measuring each ambassador's environmental impact. "The idea is for them to leverage Goumbook's support and transform it into online pledges," she added.
The Environmental Agency Abu Dhabi, Knowledge and Human Development Authority, Eco-schools and Emirates Wildlife Society-World Wildlife Fund - felicitated the student ambassadors recently. 
The students all in the age group of 8-16 years, were creative and undertook innovative initiatives to spread awareness.
Sainath Manikandan, 10, from GEMS United Indian School, Abu Dhabi, a member of EEG and also an ambassador of DIY, created a marine cleaner robot that can remove waste from seas and oceans. "We are living on a plastic planet and I aim to encourage the use of paper bags and cloth/jute bags in my community, schools as well as in my home country to discard the use of plastics," he said.
Another DIY ambassador is teenager Abdul Muqeet, also known as the paper bag boy as he has been rallying against plastic for the past eight years. As part of the initiative, Muqeet has managed to convince the Indian restaurant in the city to remove plastic cutlery from the takeaway packs. They have also started using paper bags instead of plastic bags. His talks have also led his school to ban the use of plastic bottles and plastic sandwich bags.
Summing up the message of the youth campaign, Abella said: "Tomorrow's leaders have to be equipped for tomorrow's challenges, and it is our duty to prepare them for the future. Therefore, we announced this campaign to mobilise the youth and give them the support they need to spread awareness."
saman@khaleejtimes.com