Ms Irawaty’s passion for nature and plants, made her became very aware of the need to protect
the earth and conserve the environment. One of which is by promoting zero waste lifestyle, and
encourage others to at the very least sort their trash. Irawaty has been a volunteer at Tzu Chi
for almost 12 years, and her passion brought her to focus her good work at recycling depots and
environment activities in Tzu Chi.

On 13 November 2019, Ms Irawaty spoke before Tzu Chi School Grade 8 students at the Xi Shi
Ting hall, Gan En Building, Tzu Chi Center. Ms Irawaty shared some useful information about environmental protection and the efforts we can do to possibly save the earth, before our Grade 8 students proceed with recycling activity at Tzu Chi Recycling Depot.

She began her presentation by showing a video made by Rich Horner, a British diver who filmed himself in water strewn with plastic waste at the renowned dive site Manta Point on the island of Nusa Penida.

The video showed a thick layer of rubbish floating on the water, dominated by plastic waste such as plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic cups, plastic sheets, plastic buckets, plastic sachets, and plastic straws.

“I seriously encourage us to stop using plastics. If you think plastic is hygienic, you should rethink about it since plastic is such a prone material. It can’t be put under the sun, and God knows what happened during the distribution before those bottles reached our hands,” said Ms Irawaty.

How do we solve this? “First and foremost, we need to reduce any disposable products. When we buy dishes to be used at home, we wash them before use, but do you think these disposable products can be washed? Yes, it seems practical but, you’re just adding more rubbish everyday.”

In order to get the students understand the risk caused by the number of waste we create everyday, Ms Irawaty with other volunteers presented a fun, yet meaningful games for the students to participate. Divided into groups of four, each group must stand together on top of a piece of newspaper. Every time she said, ‘Trash is coming!’, they have to fold the newspaper into half, and so forth. Which means, the more trash we make, the smaller the newspaper will become.

“This newspaper is like our earth, you see… the more we trash, the less space we have left on this earth to live in,” explained Ms Irawaty.

Living the 135 Lifestyle

Ms Irawaty also shared such a great, easy-to-remember method to reduce waste and conserve the environment: the 135. These numbers represent ways of life, which are: ‘1’ when you use the tap water, only let it run small and thin like the number ‘1’ to save water. The second number is ‘3’ which represents what 3 things we save by abide to a vegetarian diet: (a) we protect the earth from methane gas pollution from stock farms, (b) we love and preserve our health, and (c) we appreciate life. The last number, number ‘5’ represent the five ‘heirlooms’ to carry everyday:
(a) water bottle, (b) lunch boxes, (c) cutleries, (d) handkerchief, and (e) reusable bag.
“This number, 135 is easy to remember and hopefully glued to our memory so we can practice this everyday, to help save the environment,” said Ms Irawaty.

Consistency is Key

After an insightful morning, our 8 graders got to experience hands-on activity on waste sorting at Tzu Chi Recycling Depot located at the back of the school. Jane Claressa Deborah, 8 Kindness student who was sorting out paper waste in a group of colours, found the activity to be motivational for her and her classmates, ‘It encourages us to actually recycle, and sort our trash. I now know how to sort them out, I also know better on how to handle plastic bottle.’ Ms Elaine Lapuz, Grade 8 Year Leader at Tzu Chi Secondary found the recycling activity to be very fun, “With the hands-on activity like this, I think they’re enjoying it. It’s also a team effort to
finish the work,”

However, Ms Lapuz suggested such activity can be made regular. “For me, to be able to instill the value within this kids to really care about the environment requires consistency not only at school but also at home. We can also involve the parents.”

When asked about what more to be done for students, Ms Irawaty explained, “Us at the volunteer team and the school can only teach them so much, but it is my hope for our students to bring these values home, to influence parents and family at home so they can also practice them.”

Everything from protecting the earth to doing good for humankind begins with ourselves ~ Jing
Si Aphorism by Master Cheng Yen