Bayer picks 4 students to go to Germany

Four college students – two from the Visayas and one each from Luzon and Mindanao — will go on a week-long tour of Germany in November as part of their price in topping search for this year’s Bayer Young Environmental Envoys (BYEE).

The four are Alfredo Gersava Jr. of Sultan Kudarat State Polytechnic College, Leonardo Udasco Jr. of Nueva Vizcaya State University, Janus Le-an Dellava of University of the Philippines Visayas, and John Ryan Recabar of University of the Philipines Visayas.

Gersava Jr. introduced the technology of making rice hull cement bonded blocks for the communities of Gawad Kalinga in Sultan Kudarat that provides livelihood and cuts the costs of construction materials.

Udasco Jr. is promoting vermicomposting as an alternative way of converting agricultural wastes into organic fertilizers.

Dellava was able to develop a device that converts residual plastic waste into vegetable pots for urban gardening.

Recabar launched an anti-soil erosion campaign to educate people about the risks of soil erosion in Polomolok, South Cotabato and bringing the community and the private sector together to address the issue.

For the first time, the winners of the annual search of Bayer were chosen not only based on their project proposals but also on the merit of how they have successfully implemented their projects in their respective project sites.

The four winners will go to Germany in November to observe the environmentally sound practices of the country and the Bayer headquarters in Leverkusen, together with their counterparts from Thailand, Singapore, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Poland, Kenya, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Venenzuela, Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam.

The Bayer Young Environmental Program is the flagship initiative of Bayer and the United Nations Environment Program, which aims to educate the youth on the global efforts to save and protect the environment. It started in Thailand in 1995 and was introduced in the Philippines in 2001.