Ideas for environmental protection - Small initiatives, great benefits

Along with economic development and urbanization, many environmental consequences affect the quality of life. Interested in the treatment of environmental pollution not only scientists, experts, but also many young people.

By gaining knowledge in schools and learning more, many young people have practical jobs to contribute to environmental protection, typically initiatives to build green buildings, create objects environmentally friendly materials, in which many projects have won high prizes in contests for young creative ideas. Hopefully, with the contribution of many people, especially of young people, the environmental pollution will be improved to make the city face greener - clean - beautiful.

BUCA group (Nguyen Van Thanh ranked third from right).

Greening the project with waste

Coming from the airy Pleiku mountain street of the Central Highlands, Nguyen Van Thanh - a student of the Department of Urban Engineering of Ho Chi Minh City University of Architecture. Ho Chi Minh felt suffocated when the living environment in this city was very lacking in green space, from school spaces to public places. Concerned about this issue, by the third academic year, when he learned Waste Recycling, he was very interested in finding a solution to urban greening by using garbage and embarking on research with the direction lead by subject teacher. From the idea, Van Thanh plans to implement the project in the direction of high practicality. In order to have enough staff to implement the project "Recycling waste in school to green the project", he mobilized some schoolmates to establish BUCA group including Van Thanh (team leader), Dang Khoa, Vu Phung, Yen Duong, Minh Duc, Que Tram, Nhat Anh, Anh Khoa and Doan Van Hung.

The task of the group is to collect garbage in schools and classify, use recycled plastic is all kinds of plastic to squeeze into pieces of panels about 1m ² in size and reassemble, put on walls to both waterproof and can Planting trees. They also make use of garbage to make pots and bins handy for sorting garbage. "The most time-consuming and difficult task is sorting waste at the source and working with plastic manufacturing companies to convince them to cooperate with the garbage compartment. Fortunately, the group has been helped by many people. So far, everything has been going smoothly " - Van Thanh is happy to share. It is estimated that the complete green wall is quite cheap, ranging from 300-400 thousand VND / m ² and is guaranteed for three to five years.

This project has won many awards of "Young Creative", "Energy Saving" ideas contests and the latest is the British Council's award for environmental innovations, worth VND 100 million. . Van Thanh said the group is using this bonus to pilot the main greening project that you are attending, expected to be completed in September 2012. After the schools, the group will continue to bring green walls to public buildings such as bus stop stations, hospitals, and coffee shops, followed by people's houses. "Participating in competitions is just a way for us to learn, improve the project and be lucky enough to win the prize, which gives us the motivation to continue our plan. I believe that the project is expected. This project will contribute positively to solve the shortage of green space for the city, increase the beauty but low cost, very economical, so I hope to receive the attention and cooperation of many people " - Van Thanh to speak. Scientists have calculated and concluded that if 20% of the urban area is covered, it will reduce the temperature from 1 to 2 ^o C and the amount of CO2 in the air will decrease significantly, then reduce the use of the machine. Air conditioner will save power. The project of BUCA group has the advantage of saving urban land area by utilizing the walls of the project. Looking further, if there are many roads covered by the BUCA method, many green walking streets will be formed.

Brick from garbage

With the idea of "Recycling processed domestic waste to produce construction materials" , a group of six young people are students from universities, including Truc My, Anh Khoa, Kim Ngan and Quynh Nhu, Mai Thy and Duy Ca won the first prize in the "2011 Lighting" contest organized by Stanford University's Technology Investment Fund (USA). The group will represent Vietnam to attend the semifinals of the international young entrepreneurship competition in the US and Singapore in 2012.

Greening model of BUCA works.

The way to make bricks from their waste is quite simple: the first is to sort household waste after collecting such as carton, plastic, aluminum . and then put the material as Small sized inorganic garbage (from 3mm to 3cm) into the mixer with cement, sand, macadam and adhesives without going through the burning process. This brick has many advantages, is an eco-friendly product that is completely environmentally friendly, light in weight, high in strength, cheaper than conventional bricks. What makes the members of the group interested is that when this project becomes a reality, it will bring many practical benefits to the community such as reducing waste and waste disposal costs (not burial should reduce environmental pollution. school and disease from garbage), reduce air pollution (CO2 emissions during incineration or the process of making bricks), reduce water pollution and soil pollution in landfill and landfill disposal sites garbage filling. In addition, this project, if deployed on a large scale, also resolves the fear of losing the cultivated land of the suburban people because the landfill is in danger of growing.

According to the experimental results of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, when soaking bricks made from domestic waste, there is no color, odor, soaked water without strange taste, no harmful substances causing environmental pollution. school Domestic and foreign investors rated this project as highly feasible, not only contributing to reducing environmental pollution but also being economically viable. Scientists hope that bricks produced from recycled materials will be used to build public buildings so that everyone can see the benefits of garbage collection and recycling.

Absorb oil with melaleuca carpet

Melaleuca is a popular tree in the Southwest region, particularly in the wetlands of Melaleuca water is also planted into forests. For a long time, people used to use cajuput stalks to make foundation piles, pillars, distilled cajuput leaves to get essential oil, while cajuput shells were considered as waste products. Therefore, the intention to study using cajuput shells to clean the environment is very much interested.

With the initiative to use melaleuca cajuput shells, Melaleuca trees in the Southwest region will be used more.

That is the initiative of teachers Nguyen Ngoc Hai, An Lac Thon High School teacher, Soc Trang province and three students: Nguyen Tri Hai, Ly Cong Hien and Nguyen Thanh Liem. With the topic "Collecting oil spilled with cajuput shells" , this group of teachers and students studied and experimented using melaleuca pods as a belt to suck petrol and oil from gas stations, motorbike repair shops . Overcoming 800 Contest entries of schools throughout the country, the topic has been selected as the representative of Vietnam to attend the international environmental competition in Sweden. Previously, the group won the first prize of the national competition on the topic "Improving the use and protection of water resources" by the Association of Natural and Environmental Protection in collaboration with the General Department of Environment, Ministry of Education and Training. create organization.

Mr. Ngoc Hai said that after many tests, it can be seen that compared with other absorbent substances such as cotton, coconut fiber, dried water hyacinth ., Melaleuca pods have the most ability to absorb oil. Mr. Ngoc Hai did the experiment, using water after being treated to irrigate the spinach tree - the plant is very sensitive to the water contaminated with gasoline, the result of the fruit tree is still green, proving that the water is contaminated with petroleum. be strong melaleuca shell. From the positive results, the research team led by Mr. Ngoc Hai expanded the scope of application, using melaleuca shells as perimeter of petroleum selling points, explosion repair shops along the river . to absorb gasoline and oil. patchy on the road and on the water. This is a unique, inexpensive initiative that brings practical benefits in contributing to environmental protection so it should be widely introduced to many places with the application.