Climate change has its impact on our lives in many ways. Around the globe, seasons are shifting, temperature is climbing and sea level is rising. Our future generation might not be able to enjoy the cool spring breeze. Efforts are need to preserve the word as it is, if not better.

Environmental movement, sometimes referred to as ecology movement, is a diverse social, scientific, and political movement for addressing environmental issue: politicians making acts, companies leading environmental campaigns. However, small efforts are also needed. For example, Hanna Byun, a high school junior at Centennial Christian School (CCS) in Korea, has founded and organized the Environmental club in 2014. Hanna thought that her own generation should realize and recognize the current situation that environment faces and, should find a way to preserve the word as it is now. The club meets every Friday after school, to discuss the intensity of the current issue and to seek a way to protect the environment.

The system is to improve awareness and practice of eco-friendly activities at the school. Having a recycling program is regarded as the ethical necessity in our society; furthermore, it is defined by law in Korea for any business or schools. CCS also had the recycling system. However, it did not work properly since teachers and students at school were not aware that there was such system. This issue was brought to the Environmental club by Hanna, the founder and president of the club. After a few intensive meetings, the environmental club reached a conclusion that it was not janitors’ job to recycle but the students’ job because they are the ones throwing away the garbage.

The club requested the head office at CCS that there needed to be at least one set of recycling bins on each floor. The club did not stop there but also put up posters on the walls and used the assembly time to announce the new recycling system to the students and faculty. Though it was a small act by one of the club, people at CCS started showing interest in the system and actually using the system. Moreover, one of the elementary teachers asked the Environmental club to cooperate with her students, who had just finished a unit on the environment, to have a presentation of the new recycling system. Hanna, the president of the club said “it was such a productive opportunity to show and teach younger students about how recycling can help preserve the environment we have today.”

With the new recycling system in place, the environmental club looks forward to the next project, helping preventing the climate change. The environmental club will focus on preventing the climate change by teaching and announcing about the carbon footprint, which leads to global warming, then to climate change eventually, and the way to reduce the carbon footprint at CCS.

The environmental club hopes that its small effort would increase the awareness and consciousness of the students, and would ameliorate the atmosphere at CCS that environment can also be preserved by small effort in our everyday life.

Hannah Byun
Grade 11
Centennial Christian School