Toyota Eco Youth Celebrates 15th Anniversary, Aims To Tackle Solid Waste Management

Toyota Eco Youth Celebrates 15th Anniversary, Aims To Tackle Solid Waste Management

Toyota Eco Youth 2016 UMW Toyota Motor Presiden Datuk Ismet Suki (right) and En. Mahamad Amran Kamsi from MOE (left) with team leaders of participating schools

As the Toyota Eco Youth Challenge celebrates its 15th year, it is making Solid Waste Management its theme for the year. Starting off as an eco competition between schools, the annual programme has grown by leaps and bounds, impacting secondary school children and teachers as well as countless communities where the participating schools are located.

“It is no secret that environment sustainability is second nature to Toyota,” said Datuk Ismet Suki, President of UMW Toyota Motor (UMWT), at the opening ceremony of the Toyota Eco Youth programme held in Concorde Hotel, Shah Alam last week.

He adds that on a global basis, the car manufacturer has established the Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050, which identified 6 key environmental issues to be tackled in the next 3 decades such as CO2 reduction, water optimization and establishing societies that practice recycling and an earth-friendly culture.

Toyota Eco Youth Challenge LogoCloser to home, UMWT implements environmental best practices at their head office, showrooms and service centers. Various environmental activities are also conducted with their staff every year such as environmental awareness talks, tree planting, recycling and others. These efforts underline UMWT’s strong commitment to environmental consciousness and grow a future generation that adopts sustainable practices in all aspects of life.

En Mahamad Amran Kamsi, Chief Asst Director, Ministry of Education concurs that solid waste is a long-standing problem that is growing worse by the day as the country’s and world’s population increases. “The main problem with solid waste is that they are not biodegradable,” said Mahamad Amran. “A plastic bottle takes 500 years to break down, a plastic bag 10-20 years, a milk carton 5 years, a tin can 50 years, a glass bottle 1 million years. This means it is not only a problem to the planet now, but for the next 10, 100, 1000, up to a million years,” he laments.

He lauds UMWT for the Toyota Eco Youth programme as it allows students to develop both technical and soft skills. As education is a lifelong process, it goes beyond the four walls of a classroom or school. It takes more than textbooks to develop intelligence and higher thinking skills, asserts Mahamad Amran.

In the past, participating schools were selected by the Ministry of Education, typically one from each state for a fair representation across the country. Bringing the challenge on notch higher, schools which want to participate in the Toyota Eco Youth programme this year have to submit a project proposal to the organizing committee.

This new arrangement is expected to bring even better results in terms of project outcome, promotion and exposure as these schools would have already shown their competitive spirit from the onset. To-date, 209 schools have participated in the Toyota Eco Youth Challenge and UMWT has spent over RM 6 million since the programme’s inception in 2001.

Toyota Eco Youth 2016 UMW Toyota Motor Presiden Datuk Ismet Suki and En. Mahamad Amran Kamsi from MOE talking to team leaders of participating schools

NO COMMENTS

Leave a Reply