Recycling CAS 2010-2011

Recycling bottles on the Overseas School of Colombo's campus.

This is my first year in an International Baccalaureate (IB) school. This means that it is also my first time doing a Community and Service (CAS) activity. I chose the activity of recycling because, being introduced to this new system of school, I wanted to choose something I knew and felt a little familiar with before trying activities that seemed quite new and complicated to me. Afterall, I did do similar recycling activities in my old school although they were not always required. Reflecting on my decision, I think that I chose the correct CAS activity as my school work and extra-curriclular life during the beginning of my school year was still quite balanced despite spending every Thursdary afternoon cleaning up the environment. The following explains the Recycling CAS group of the Overseas School of Colombo (OSC) further:

"OSC is working on reducing campus waste through the collection and sorting of recyclables on site. The Recycling and Sustainability group consists of one teacher, Mr. Lockwood, two main leaders, Alex Mylvaganam, and Constanze Klempin and a small group of ten to fifteen students. The school waste is put into the recycling room under the big water tank near the gym/cafeteria where we stored everything until Thursday afternoon where students go from class to class collecting recyclable materials. We collect paper, clean plastic, batteries, cartridges, cardboard, etc. Our group collects the materials and sorts them. Then we take the materials in the OSC maintenance pickup truck and deliver the materials to a recycling center near the campus. We make a significant amount of money selling recyclables (especially cardboard and paper). There is still more to be done but at least we are making a small change for our community."

This map shows the route our truck takes to get to the Recycling Center from OSC.

As mentioned, this CAS group really focuses on the school environment but it is also helpful for the general local environment. This is because the obtained materials are all loaded into a pickup truck that transports the items to a recycling center where the items are sold. This generates income for the buyer of the materials as he buys the materials at a low price from our CAS group and resells them at a higher price to various environmentally friendly companies and groups. It also allows that person to be employed which, is often not easy in a developing country such as Sri Lanka. The money that we, as a CAS group, generate through the trade allows us to donate to various other causes as well. One can clearly deduce that recycling is not only a benefit for the environment, but it is also a benefit for the local economy (even if it is only a small benefit).

Click on the Graph for an enlarged view.

Above you can see a scatter graph focusing on the paper/cardboard collected in the CAS recycling activity throughout most of 2010-2011. The trend seems to be that less and less cardboard and paper is being collected with occasional spikes of high amounts of paper/cardboard. The reason for this is that, at the beginning of the school year, all the recyclable materials in the school gathered in heaps throughout the summer. With no one to attend to them, small piles became mountains. Thus, the most materials were collected at the beginning of the school year; declining more and more as work was put in to get it all recycled. But one must not infer that less work was done in the later stages of the year. In fact, many events and occasions that produced a surplus in recyclable materials (spikes in the graph), in the later stages of the school year. This kept our CAS group busy and working hard. Taken together, it is easy to see that throughout the whole school year a lot of work was needed to get all the recycling done. It was not left unrewarded however, as you can imagine that 120 kilograms of paper did not sell for that little money (the rate was somewhere around 3-4 Sri Lankan rupees a kilo, I believe).

In conclusion, although the Community and Service activity of Recycling was my only CAS activity this year, it still gave me a good taste of the IB programme's required work in this extracurricular aspect of school. Next year, I will continue working hard on my subsequent CAS activity, whatever it may be. Also, along with my CAS activity this year, I have also donated to various causes such as Cleft Palate, Hope for Kids Cancer association and Japan's earthquake and tsunami. I have also worked with my classmates painting and refurnishing a school for underprivileged kids in a remote area of north Sri Lanka. It was an interesting and very rewarding experience for me and the children I got to help. Throughout this year, I have also worked hard on school work and studies but I have definitely never forgot that giving is an important part of life too. ▪


Patrick Hofbauer is a student at the Overseas School of Colombo. Currently he is in the secondary school and he enjoys living in Sri Lanka. He is from Austria and is a proud member of the Class of 2015.