This year I have been to Singapore for the FLL (First Lego League) Trash Trek robot competition. It happens once a year and there is different topic in every year. It is one of the thing that have change Cambodia because my team had made one commercial that can education Cambodia people to reduce plastic. From Liger Learning Center there is a group of ten students who participate in that competition and we divided into two team that have five students in each team. The topic about the robot competition this year was about Trash Trek. We all decided to do about plastic bags. We had named our team. My team named Rebot, and another team named Cambot. My team choose to do about reducing plastic bags. We did the research about it and found out that there are a lot of problems about plastic in Cambodia.
Problem
- 1500 tons of waste/day in Phnom Penh
- 15% to 17% plastic bag
- Landfill near Phnom Penh is almost full because we always bring the trash to there
- Most people burn trash near their houses
- toxic chemicals are released into the air and soil so it can effect to their health
- We see plastic bag trash EVERYWHERE
- People use plastic bag because they think that they’re easy and they didn’t think of the environmental problem
- Only one small organisation recycles bags in Cambodia
Where do we get these information form?
- CINTRI – Waste disposal company
- In order to learn about plastic we went to CINTRI. It is the company in Phnom Penh that collect the trash and bring it to the landfill.
- Funky Junk Recycled – NGO that reuses and recycles plastic bags to make purses
- In Cambodia there is only one organization called Funky Junk that recycle plastic bags. But they only recycle a few of them.
- Ministry of Tourism – Future factory to recycle plastic
- The Ministry of Tourism had came to our school and told us that in near the future there will a factory that recycle plastic bags into the black oil. Which can be use to build the road.
- Ministry of Environment – Has started a campaign to reduce plastic
- The last and most important things this project is the Ministry of Environment. They had asked us to make a commercial about reducing plastic bags.
Solution to the problems of plastic bags
We have made one commercial that is about reducing plastic bags that are acted by one of our chief at school (be a dad), residential educator (mom), and one of our team member (daughter). We hope that when people look at our commercial they will understand more about plastics for how it can affect to our environment. Also in that commercial we had told people to use reusable containers. For example: when we go to the market most of the time people use plastics bags to put stuff so we want them to a cloth bag instead. The commercial that we have made was view in the Ministry of Environment website and Facebook.
All the people who participate in the robot Competition had went to Singapore. Before the day that we do the robot competition we need to do the presentation to judges about the project that we had work on about the Trash Trek. There are a lot of people from different schools that join the competition, about 400 schools and there are over 2000 people. On the next day in the morning it was the time to do the competition with our robot. There are so many challenges that our robot needed to complete and all the challenges was about Trash Trek. After we do the robot competition it was the time to know our result for the presentation and the robot. Both of the teams from our school didn’t win anything price with our robot because there are some problem while we did the those challenges. But my team (Rebot) had won for the presentation with the innovative solution because we had made a commercial about reducing plastic that can educate people to learn more about it.
How does it help to change Cambodia?
When people look at our commercial they will reflect to themselves that before what they have done and now what should they be change. We hope that the next generation will not destroy our environment if they watch our video. We want people to reduce plastic by using reusable containers. If it have people do it everyday then there will more people that do follow them, then will have a clean environment.