Week 8: Field Works - In Campus Observation IIUM as Sustainable Campus: Students as Agent of Change

Assalamualaikum and hey!! Welcome back to my blog. So, today I have learnt on a new topic which is the FieldWorks - In Campus Observation IIUM as Sustainable Campus: Students as Agent of Change.

For your information, IIUM had won Green Gown Awards International as the first university in Malaysia which has ever received it. If you want to get more information on it, you may watch the video below.

So, how sustainable is IIUM? Actually, there are many projects that IIUM had done in achieving a green campus. Some examples of the projects are Food Bank, CFS Sejahtera Room, Cat Shelter, Solar Panel, Recycling Station, Food Waste Composting, Zero Single-Use Plastic, UniRide Ecotour and many more. These examples showed that IIUM is very serious and concern in turning IIUM into a green campus and more 'Sejahtera'.

As this topic is on the Students as Agent of Change, I would like to share some of the proposals of the projects of my classmates in helping IIUM to be more sustainable campus. The projects are FreeMarket, Salam Corner, Earth Hour Event, Nature Club, Mobile, Budiman Project, Zero Waste On The Go Kit, Gig-Grad Apps and Reviving Tasik Maryam. We can see that there are various type of projects that my friends would like to do in help turning IIUM into a sustainable campus. All of those projects have included all social, economic and environmental aspects.

But how about my group proposed project? My group had picked the issue on turning campus waste into gold and we had agreed to do the 7Rs project. Do you even hear about 7Rs before? I believed that many people have not heard about it. Now, I would like to share what 7Rs is all about.

7Rs is a new concept of handling waste other than 3Rs which people commonly know. So, in 7Rs, the 3Rs also included under it. So what are 7Rs consisting of? They consist of:

1. Rethink
2. Refuse
3. Reduce
4. Reuse
5. Repurpose
6. Recycle
7. Rot

As you can see above, they are 4Rs that we are new with which are Rethink, Refuse, Repurpose and Rot. So, how to apply them?

Rethink

There are some words from L.N. Smith which is "Every dollar you spend or don't spend is a vote you cast for the world you want to live in". It means we need to rethink about the choices that we want to make because every choice that we make is very important to the health of the planet.

Refuse

As we know, plastics very harm to the environment. One way to apply the refuse concept, we can refuse to buy items which are over-packaged or packaged in plastic. Other than that, by refusing to use the plastics at the counter is also another way in applying this concept.

Repurpose

As we know that, one day, some of the things that we had bought in the past will be useless in the present as they get old. However, we can change the purpose of those things. Some examples are by repurposing the ladder into a bookshelf, cheese graters into earring holders and lights, and racket into the frame of the mirror.

Rot

Another word of rot is composting. By composting our food waste, it can be the fertilizer to other plants. It is because food waste is enriched in a nutrient that can help the growth of the other plants.

I also would like to share the poster of our group project which is the picture below.

Is not 7Rs attractive, right? My hope from this project is the students can learn in respecting better to the environment by applying 7Rs in their life. For more information on our project, you can visit this link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WxmkbiN_qMYfChF0vUgYM6UZ-pTbgiyd&authuser=0

I think that is all for this week's reflective journal. Thank you for reading and see you in the next post!!