Fostering sustainability education for the young through creative recycling
Into our third year of collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Fonterra continues its effort to empower young minds to creatively repurpose daily waste materials into valuable end-products.
The annual inter-school creative recycling competition, ‘From Trash to Treasure’ had doubled the participation this year with more than 180 schools across Malaysia taking up the challenge to care for the environment in the most innovative ways.
Into our third year of collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Fonterra continues its effort to empower young minds to creatively repurpose daily waste materials into valuable end-products.
With more than 280 proposals received, Seri Pantai school from the state of Kedah emerged as Champion with their unique proposal called ‘Pufferfishboat’ - a "trash pick-up boat" made of waste polystyrene that could be mobilized to collect waste surfacing on water. The team was recognized for their work in challenging boundaries to solve a community issue. They walked away with RM 2000, a trophy, and a certificate.
“Education and awareness are an important duo in encouraging positive behavior, and starting young is key. In Fonterra, sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. We believe in creating goodness for the future generation in every way possible, and initiatives like this are a great way to start because every small effort made early can create a huge change later”, said Irene Cheah, Marketing Director of Fonterra Brands Malaysia.
Following their win, the school representative of Seri Pantai school shared “Thank you to Fonterra Brands Malaysia for the opportunity, our teachers for guiding us, and judges for their valuable feedback and selecting us as winners. We gained a lot of experience throughout this journey. We are happy to have made our school proud”.
With 47 years of presence in Malaysia, a farmer-owned New Zealand dairy co-operative, Fonterra has been well-known for producing much-loved brands like Fernleaf, Anlene, and Chesdale. Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. We take pride in the high-quality dairy produced by our grass-fed cows, coming from our New Zealand farms which are already among the most efficient in the world (being one of the lowest on-farm carbon footprints in the world).
“Education and awareness are an important duo in encouraging positive behavior, and starting young is key. In Fonterra, sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. We believe in creating goodness for the future generation in every way possible, and initiatives like this are a great way to start because every small effort made early can create a huge change later”
With the opportunity and responsibility, to influence for good and make a difference in the world, we are working hard to ensure both our dairy dan packaging are sustainably produced. Our global ambition is committed to having 100% recyclable, reusable, and compostable packaging by 2025, and in Malaysia, more than 80% of our packaging is already recycle-ready.
With our big commitments to sustainable packaging solutions, partnering with the right experts is important as we move further in the green value chain. Our recent collaboration with Penang Green Council (PGC) and Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) on a Feasibility Study to establish a pilot collection scheme for soft plastic packaging in Penang is one of the many important works we are doing to study the current infrastructure and consumer attitudes and behaviors towards recycling.
“Creating change requires a team effort. We are pleased to have collaborated with stakeholders who take this green journey seriously. We hope to have more opportunities to embed the importance of sustainability amongst our community”, Cheah added.
Fonterra remains committed to caring for the environment as it continues to build a genuine connection with people through commitments on and off the farm and demonstrates Good Together in everything that it does.