Our Eco Club also joined with the rest of our school to take part in the 24th Annual International Coastal Cleanup. The International Coastal Cleanup is the world’s largest volunteer effort to help protect the ocean, according to the Ocean Conservancy. Our Eco Club started the day before and cleaned along Beach Road, starting from Quartermaster all the way to MVA. The very next day, Sept. 18, 2009, our whole school separated into two groups and helped to clean Jeffries Beach and Wing Beach. Our school helped to pick up trash at a total of three beaches during the International Coastal Cleanup.
We also decided to increase our recycling efforts. Our Eco Club made three recycling bins out of chicken wire for plastic, glass, and cans that we placed outside of our main office. We use them to deposit our recyclables into, including those we pick up at our beach cleanups.
This semester some students from our school teamed up with the Mariana Islands Nature Alliance to help raise awareness about the hazards marine debris pose to our marine ecosystem. We have done school presentations to different grade levels at schools like S.I.S. and Garapan Elementary School, and will be presenting at Brilliant Star School. Last March at Saipan Community School’s Eco Karnival, our students helped at the MINA booth explaining to the community how long it takes for marine debris to decompose, like cigarette butts (10 years), plastic bags (35~60 years), plastic rings (450 years), plastic bottles (300~500 years), and glass bottle (more than 1000 years!).
If you’ve ever seen “Primo” (the yellow crowned butterfly fish found only in the Marianas) at a public event, chances are it was one of our students in the Primo costume.
To make a better community with a clean environment, the citizens must work together. Every single piece of trash on the ground can be detrimental to the environment. Our Eco Club wants to inform everyone how much littering can harm our environment. We will continue to work in the future to keep the environment clean. Always remember to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Let’s help keep Saipan and the rest of the Northern Mariana Islands clean and beautiful!
YOON JAE CHUNG
Freshman
Northern Marianas Academy
