Winning partnership benefits school, environment

Manila, Philippines - Students of Paco Catholic School, with the help of Unilever Philippines, have found a way to care for the environment through proper solid waste management and also to beautify their school grounds.

Over a four-month pilot period, high school students from Paco Catholic School joined forces to collect flexible plastic wrappers from their homes and from their family and friends, with each section competing to collect the most number of kilos of used plastic wrappers. Unilever provided product incentives to participating students.

At the end of the collection period, two sections from the graduating class emerged as winners and were treated by Unilever to a whole day educational field trip to their manufacturing facilities at the Gateway Industrial Park in General Trias, Cavite City. The students and teachers went either to Unilever’s Foods Plant or the Metrolab Facility. Socials followed as a way of establishing greater camaraderie among the participants.

A total of 160 kilos of trash made up of plastic wrappers of various companies and brands were collected. These wrappers were turned over to Unilever, who shredded it and used it as aggregates to produce 1,800 cement paving blocks. These were then donated back to Paco Catholic School for use in their campus beautification efforts.

The partnership between Unilever and Paco Catholic School will continue in the coming school year with a wider participation of both the elementary and high school levels.

From plastic wrappers to cement pavers, this partnership between Unilever and Paco Catholic School is a laudable project to involve schoolchildren in waste segregation as a basic step towards responsible waste management.