Kids urged to help in recycling campaign

MANILA, Philippines - Tang Philippines is encouraging young Filipinos to help in the recycling campaign, particularly by collecting foil packs of food items to be used in making chairs that would be distributed to various schools in the country.

Early this year, Tang Philippines partnered with Envirotech, a private company, to come up with “Project RecyClass,” which aims to collect soft plastic and foil packs that will be converted into school chairs.

Jean Yu, Tang Philippines assistant brand manager, yesterday said the recycling of foil packs is the first mission of the more than 16,000 members of their newly launched Tang Galing Club, which is open to kids between seven to 12 years old.

Kids can join the club online at www.TangGalingClub.com.

The club’s target is to produce 10,000 school chairs to be distributed to 17 barangays by the end of the year. Since each chair would need 30 kilos of foil, they would need a total of 300,000 kilos of foil to complete their mission.

The Philippines generates about 4.6 million kilos of plastic waste, and a significant volume reportedly comes from packaging materials such as plastic foils and containers.

“We try to inculcate in the kids that recycling can be fun. It is not something difficult to do and that even kids can make a difference,” Yu said.

To meet the planned production of 10,000 chairs this year, representatives from Tang would visit different barangays with large populations for two weeks.

On the first week, they will hold an information campaign to explain to the residents the mechanics of their project.

During the second week, they will collect the donated foil packs.

Yu said Tang and Envirotech were the ones who first came up with the idea of recycling foil packs and turning them into chairs.

These chairs are reportedly sturdier than the regular wooden chairs and are also flood-resistant.

Yu added that Tang might also start a recycling project to construct school tables.