Poland's MEGA Club Introduction

As a part of the MEGA community, we've tried to make the biggest possible change in our area when it comes to ecology. Firstly, we've started to educate new students of our school about the eco-friendly style of our community. The whole delegation of students from our club visited all the new classes to zoom in on the topic of waste segregation. We eliminated single bins in every class and have put 4 bins in every school corridor, thereby providing waste segregation in our high school. Our delegation prepared the Kahoot quiz to show the youngsters how surprising waste segregation can be, f.ex. you can not put paper cups in the bin slated for paper because they contain plastic! Every bin is labelled and there are also placards with instructions about segregation.

The next thing was our Earth Day action. We decided to do something for our planet on its day, and the whole club went to the forests in the areas that we live in to collect rubbish from parks and forests. It is a very serious issue in Poland. Sadly, we have no sense of 'common good' and we don't care much about the rubbish left in the forests. We are trying to make a change! Because of the worldwide pandemic, we weren't able to do it together, so we had to improvise. Every member went by themselves to the forests and, sadly, we all found tones of rubbish, also some surprising items as a fridge, wheels or a washing machine. We have captured this day in pictures and videos, which later have been put together in one video. When it comes to the rubbish we've decided to make another change in our school i.e. plastic bags in the school shop! Every day hundreds of students (and teachers) buy (when our school is not closed) tones of sandwiches, sweet buns and sweets, which were all packed in plastic bags. We could not stand it. We have put pressure on Mrs Seller and the Headmaster to change it. And we did it! Now we have only paper bags which are much more eco-friendly.

Another thing we do every year is collecting food after Christmas Eve at our school. As you may know, Poland is mostly a Catholic country and it is our small tradition to organise the Christmas Eve at school, just a few days before the real one. Students usually bring food and drinks to celebrate this special time of the year. Of course, we always have tones of food left and we couldn't just throw the good, edible food away. Lucky us, there are points in our city, where you can leave the food that you do not need anymore (if it’s still edible). One of our teachers, Mr Szczygieł, has lent a hand with this action. Every year he takes the leftovers to those special points where people who can't afford to buy food, can collect it for free. All the food just disappears like hotcakes! I also have to emphasise that our Christmas Eve is prepared with the zero-waste philosophy, and no plastic is welcome there! Everyone brings their cups, plates, cutlery. In this way, we prevent from using plastic at all, which on a scale of a few hundreds of people is a lot.

In the everyday life of our school, when we are not on an online mode, we also care about light energy. We want to avoid using lamps, when nobody is in the room, including the toilets! We have observed that the light is often left on when nobody is using the toilets. We also had to do something about it. We have put placards in every bathroom in the school area to remind the people to turn the light off when they leave! A few weeks after, we have seen a change!

We also have to remember the eco-friendly philosophy during our Model United Nations Conference - ToMUN. Every year we try to enlarge our actions to make our MUN as zero-waste as it can be. We encourage all the delegates to bring their cups, we do not use plastic, we have waste segregation when it comes to paper cups, one person can take only one cup per day (but we like the idea of the private reusable cups!). This year's topic will also be connected with the ecological crisis we are, and we will be facing for many years. We are trying to bring up the problem and educate ourselves as much as we can!

In the end, we have to mention that we have installed a water fountain at our school! It is a part of our action to encourage the students to drink tap water, instead of buying water in bottles, mostly plastic ones, which is buying just plastic. People are scared to drink water directly from a sink, but the water is checked by some specialists and it is safe to drink. We want the people to bring their reusable bottles and use them, that's why our fountain has 2 sinks, one for drinking and one for filling the bottles. There will also be an opportunity to buy reusable bottles with the logo of our school!