In Reply to: the drinking straw garbage again, so posted by Expateach on Friday, 6. January 2012 at 15:36 Bali Time:
If you really are looking at suitable environmental projects for your students why not start with teaching them the responsible disposal of rubbish. This is a huge issue in Indonesia with locals throwing rubbish of all kinds (and believe me when I say all sorts) where ever they want. We have been trying to educate the kids at the 4 schools in the village where we run a sponsorship project and after 5 or more years it is still an ongoing issue. Teach them the impact of dropping there lolly and ice cream wrappers on the ground. Show them and introduce a better way of disposing their rubbish. This will be enough of a challenge for you to start with without trying to change the behaviours of an entire island.
We bought each school a couple of huge metal bins a few years ago and got the kids involved in painting them. We encouraged them to use them for their rubbish. We turned our back literally for a minute only to then watch the kids tip the rubbish out of the bins onto a rubbish heap at the edge of the school yard. Really only introduced another step in the process but the rubbish ended up in exactly the same spot they had already been throwing it. We are still trying to educate them now and because we are only there for a very short period each year they very quickly revert back to what they know. It is also hard because it is an isolated village on the northern side of Bali and therefore there is no rubbish collection like you see in some of the tourist areas.