Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle in Indonesian School at a Glance Essay

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION A. Abstract We are astronauts—all of us. We ride a spaceship called Earth on its endless journey around the sun. This ship of ours is blessed with life-support systems so ingenious that they are self-renewing, so massive that they can supply the needs of billions. Unfortunately for centuries we have taken them for granted, considering their capacity limitless. At last we have begun to monitor the systems, and the findings are deeply disturbing. Scientists and government officials of entire world countries agree that we are in trouble. Unless we stop abusing our vital life-support systems, they will fail. We must maintain them, or pay the penalty. The penalty is death. Air, water, and land—those are the systems. On land, nature moves full circle. Living things are nourished there, grow old and die, then decompose to enrich the land again. A thin envelope of air surrounds the planet. We use its oxygen, exhaling carbon dioxide, which vegetation absorbs. Plants use the carbon for growth by the marvelous process called photosynthesis, and return oxygen to the atmosphere. Thus nature’s delicate balance is maintained. Most states today are ill equipped to monitor the thousands of air-pollution sources within their borders and because corrective measures can be tremendously expensive, years may pass before a factory stops spouting black smoke. Virtually every scientist we listened to—and they numbered in the dozens—emphasized that mankind must control population growth. They forecast widespread famine if population soars unchecked. Plagues, too—for in the metropolitan sprawl of the future there will no longer be sparsely settled buffer zones around cities to curb epidemics. What are the priorities? Most ecologists answered something like this: clean up the most threatened areas first. Work to unsnarl the fragmented, overlapping responsibility on national, state, and local levels. Focus research on finding environmental answers—there is so much yet to be learned. Be realistic about immediate goals. At least for now, settle for making a river clean enough to serve its particular purpose. Later, it can be made to be clean enough to drink. Get practical, enforceable pollution laws passed—standardized ones that will apply to both sides of a river, for instance, when it flows between two states. Before using a new chemical, explore for side effects, and when a new product is developed, plan for its ultimate disposal. Work toward recycling; one factory’s industrial waste can be another plan’s raw material, and make each individual aware of the problems—same like his role in solving them. This is the main problem among us who are living over this earth, how to control the production flow of goods and reutilize it well after it has been out of its usefulness period, how we could be innovative and creative in making the best use of our own belongings, unravel our industry wastes by processing it well, recycling it to be more useful good, and the most important that is inuring ourselves with reverting process to the natural resources and lifestyles. B. SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo’s Project From the abstraction given above, we can deduce that the conservation on natural ecology and surroundings is very eminent to keep the environment’s balance safe. It is all above that influences SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo to try developing high-ranking eco-school environment. The school management party has deemed for the better school worthy-life by arranging a pledge educative projects thru finalizing annual plan of eco-school improvement which is based on green living principles. From the middle of 2004, SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo has formulated some strategic programs that are able to give lots of advantages for the school’s citizens’ lives. CHAPTER 2 POINT OF VIEW A. General Decisive Idea of 3R 1. Reduce Reduce is a behavior or an action of the costumers that is able to alleviate the production of wastes, such as the usage of biodegradable bag as the substitute of non-biodegradable plastic bag and maximizing the best use of moor-land. 2. Reuse Reuse is utilizing the waste directly and advancing it without any recycling process. The reuse process can be efficiently applied well not only on the organic wastes recycling only, but also on the nonorganic wastes. The application of reusing process, for example: a. The residual waste of food producing can be advantaged as the food for animal. b. The former tires can be used again and processed to be other unique utensils and various shape of furniture. c. The residual product of furniture constructing process is able to be benefitted as useful handicrafts, such as little bag, sandals, tissue-pot, etc. 3. Recycle Recycle is processing and reusing materials that would otherwise be thrown away. Materials ranging from precious metals to broken glass, from old newspapers to plastic spoons, can be recycled. The recycling process reclaims the original material and uses it in new products. In general, using recycled materials to make new products costs less and requires less energy than using new materials. Recycling can also reduce pollution, either by reducing the demand for high-pollution alternatives or by minimizing the amount of pollution produced during the manufacturing process. It decreases the amount of land needed for trash dumps by reducing the volume of discarded waste. Recycling can be done internally (within a company) or externally (after a product is sold and used). In the paper industry, for example, internal recycling occurs when leftover stock and trimmings are salvaged to help make more new product. Since the recovered material never left the manufacturing plant, the final product is said to contain pre-consumer waste. External recycling occurs when materials used by the customer are returned for processing into new products. Materials ready to be recycled in this manner, such as empty beverage containers, are called postconsumer waste. B. 3R Campaign in SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo 1. The Motive of the Campaign The campaign of 3R’s implementation in SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo has some important motives, such as: a. SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo initially has a personal cogitation to develop a green society in school thru improving the students’ comprehension of 3R campaign. b. The school management wants to make an eco-activity of teaching and learning process in the school by benefiting no longer unused goods at school, like the former papers, second hand books, and materials trace. c. SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo is perking the new projects up to build eco-friendly constructed buildings in a vacant area, because SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo is being on a period of developing school’s building. d. The stakeholders of the school intend to put 3R slogan into action thru arranging the 3R’s Application School Annual Program. e. The citizen of the school has been cognizant that recycling conserves natural resources by reducing the need for new material. Some natural resources are renewable, meaning they can be replaced, and some are not. Paper, corrugated board, and other paper products come f rom renewable timber sources. Trees harvested to make those products can be replaced by growing more trees. Iron and aluminum come from nonrenewable ore deposits. Once a deposit is mined, it cannot be replaced. 2. The Aim of Practicing 3R In the practice of campaigning 3R program, SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo has a lot of aims that would be achieved, viz.: a. Grooming green society students in the school. b. Putting 3R implementation as an eco-educational culture of the school. This would be expected to give a high-standardized appraisal of the surroundings. c. Reducing a lot of second hand belongings and recycling them to be more advantageous goods. d. Keeping the planted-tree areas in eyes, so the school will be a green and eco-friendly place to have a teaching and learning process. 3. The Implementations Year by year, SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo always refurbishes various school programs to flesh the school citizens’ desires out as a part of global innovative society. The programs of which SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo has amended, for example: a. Recycling Contest This was an annual contest who involved entire classroom’s member as the participants. They worked together to make a creative design of former plastics-fabricated thing and put it into a real good. For the further imaginings, the school had brought theme â€Å"Fashionable Clothes† last year. Each class was given a duty to send a model who worn the recycled-plastics clothes and performed it in front of their friends. This year, the school raised interesting theme up to draw the students for participating, that was â€Å"Monumental Building†. It was out of mind that the students were able to construct astonishing varieties, like Eiffel tower, Noah’s ship, the statue of Ganesha, Neuschwanstein Castle, mosque, military tank, etc. b. Wall Magazine Competition This competition was initially held in purpose of amending the students’ creativity in designing reused-trashes. The wall magazine was created from trashy papers, dried tree-branches and leaves, shoddy cardboards, etc. Every class had to create a wide wall magazine which took natural materials as the main substance. This natural wall magazine would be displayed in front of each class of which the wall magazine belonged to. This creative idea got superbly high appreciation from the people outside the school. c. Recycling Plastic As the Main Material Plastic was used in almost every school utensils, but alas plastics are more difficult to recycle than metal, paper, or glass. One arduous problem faced was that the school got some difficulties in recycling plastics by shredding it into flakes and then melting the flakes into pellets. The final decision that had been taken was the school would redraw the plastics on by creating numerous innovative things, such as: the resave-able bags, comfortable sandals, handicrafts, simple garbage cans, seedling pots, etc., which the entire entities were made from plastic waste. d. Reusing the Organic Trashes The organic trashes, such as dried leaves, branches, roots, etc., were benefitted to be organic fertilizer like compos which were processed well by a modern machine. Besides those tree components, another real reusing process could be observed at the stationery that had been used. For example, the teachers uttered simple instructions to the students for doing the homework given by doing it on the no longer useless paper, like old carton, former paper-packing, scrapped paper, etc. C. Result of the 3R Campaign The result of the 3R campaign’s real implementations in SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo gave a lot of benefit for the school’s citizen. The result of campaigning 3R slogan for specifically: 1. The students love planting herbals and houseplants at home and school. Nowadays they are keen on campaigning a grooming green society program thru filling the school’s wall magazine with news and recently info about the conservations on environment, updating the postings in social medias about the real fact of our latest earth’s condition, and inducing the students to conserve school environments by broadening persuasive slogans among the school citizens. 2. The school management – not long ago – has decreed the regulations to give the best treatment to the school environment. It was very useful to realize the school’s project. 3. The school’s citizen is nowadays fond of recycling the school wastes to be expedient goods, especially handicrafts. 4. The school environment is cleaner than before. There are lots of mini-parks in every school corner. They are very worthwhile for the students who are yearning for comfortable self-learning. 5. There are some student movements that have been created who have main duty as prime mover or activator in treating the continuousness of the green school environs. CHAPTER 3 CULMINATION A. Conclusion From the entire explanations above, we can take some conclusions that is to say: 1. Grooming green society in school is very important because it will give lots of advantages to the school’s citizen. 2. Our allegiance in treating the stability of the nature depends on how we show a good attitude in growing the natural environment up. 3. SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo has tried various endeavors in treating the eco-school surroundings by campaigning 3R slogans’ enactments that were applied to the students and entire school’s citizens. 4. The 3R Application Campaign held by SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo has been done effectively and thru the real implementations, it gave natural balance atmosphere in the school. The shool became greener, cooler, and the air was fresher. 5. The 3R Application Campaign in SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo was supported by students’ movements who desired to spread the allurements in flourishing environs’ stability. 6. The crusading movement of 3R slogan applications done by SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo had involved every school students, so it could be precisely concluded that those tangible endeavors were efficacious and thoroughly successful. B. Suggestion For the other parties who have so much desire to take 3R Application Campaign in action like what SMA Negeri 1 Purworejo has applied, it is advisable to them to be exact: 1. Practicing 3R slogan one by one. Don’t directly apply 3R slogan thoroughly if we consider that we don’t be capable to practice it. 2. Seeking for the other parties’ supports, so we could be easier to take a step forward. 3. Learning the fully environmental eruditions by root, so when we are campaigning about 3R Application, we have comprehended and committed to memorize well everything about go-green movement and environs-treating.