Carbon Footprint Awareness

What is a Carbon Footprint?

 A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of greenhouse gases produced in our day-to-day lives through burning fossil fuels for electricity, heating and transportation.
The carbon footprint is a measurement of all greenhouse gases we individually produce and has units of tonnes (or kg) of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Go Green Handprints

This was a meaningful activity that we did today. We love to print, and have been waiting to paint on canvas rather than just watercolour paper. So today, we created hand print paintings on canvas.  

Firstly, we prepared a piece of white canvas cloth, non-toxic green colors and brushes.  Then, we had to print our handprints on the canvas. We colored our handprints with green colors. We printed our handprints on the canvas with the words “Go Green”. At last, we signed our names on it. We are very proud of our very own artwork now hanging in the school garden.

Carbon Footprint

A carbon footprint is defined as:

The total amount of greenhouse gases produced to directly and indirectly support human activities, usually expressed in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).

In other words: When you drive a car, the engine burns fuel which creates a certain amount of CO2, depending on its fuel consumption and the driving distance. (CO2 is the chemical symbol for carbon dioxide). When you heat your house with oil, gas or coal, then you also generate CO2. Even if you heat your house with electricity, the generation of the electrical power may also have emitted a certain amount of CO2. When you buy food and goods, the production of the food and goods also emitted some quantities of CO2.

Malaysia to reduce carbon footprint by 40% by 2020

No Plastic Campaign

Plastics! Let’s do something about them or with them! Today, they’re found in the streets, tree branches and streams, in every corner of this planet.


Every day, within 25 minutes of recess time, plastics are found fully loaded in the dustbin. Today, we made it a “No Plastic Day”. We brought our food containers or Tupperware and said “no” to plastics when we bought our foods from canteen workers. We used paper wrappings instead of plastics wrappings. At last, we saved hundreds of plastics in a day..

Plant A Tree

A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15%. Therefore, planting a tree is definitely a way to reduce global warming.

We have had great success in these tree-planting projects. Each of us is given a tree to plant and we even named it ourselves.

Benefits of planting trees
1. They help stop global warming by reducing greenhouse gases
2. They reduce soil erosion and water pollution
3. They provide habitat for native wildlife (including songbirds)
4. They improve human health by producing oxygen and improving air quality
5. They reduce home energy needs by providing shade in summer and a windbreak in winter

Newspapers Cutting

In today’s newspaper, we read an article on how to make some art decoration by using used polystyrene. We found it very meaningful, and so, we cut the articles and paste it in our scrapbook.

Polystyrene is a petroleum-based plastic made from the styrene monomer. Polystyrene foam is often dumped into the environment as litter. This material is notorious for breaking up into pieces that choke animals and clog their digestive systems. Toxic chemicals leach out of these products into the food that they contain. These chemicals threaten human health and reproductive systems. Therefore, we can spend some time, use our creativity, and turn the unused polystyrene into a piece of art. It is better than just throw it away..

Use Recycle Bags

It saves energy and waste to use a recycle bag instead of using a disposable plastic bag. Waste not only discharges CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, it can also pollute the air, groundwater and soil. Make the switch to recycle bags and you'll be cutting way back on your personal consumption of harmful plastic bags. Plastic bags harm wildlife and never truly break down--they only break off into smaller, toxic plastic pieces that pollute our Earth. These recycle bags are easier to carry than plastic bags. Therefore, we use recycle bags to put our homework and books. Now, most of the students in our school are using recycle bags every day.

Group Discussion

Today, during recess time, six of us in a group went to ICT room to search for some information on the topic of global warming. We had a good discussion on this topic. From the information we got, Earth has warmed and cooled time and again. Climate has changed when the planet received more or less sunlight due to subtle shifts in its orbit, as the atmosphere or surface changed, or when the Sun’s energy varied. We also studied on the Top 50 things to do to stop global warming. Some of the ideas are at no cost. So, we strongly suggest it to our friends and family members.

After the group discussion, we knew that each individual can bring an important help adopting a more responsible lifestyle: starting from little, everyday things. It’s the only reasonable way to save our planet, before it is too late.

Creative Recycled Materials

Climate change is a serious issue, we are also working on smaller scale green projects that both effect the environment and cause change by sparking discussion and reflection. Recycled materials can be made from old newspapers. Last week, we found the basic materials for this recycling projects. We looked around our surroundings. Saw old piles of used papers, newspapers at our homes and school. Those were what we were looking for. After that, we decided to make something interesting and creative from those used-paper materials. Making our own projects can be fun, and we can recycle all kinds of paper for re-use. Sometimes paper printed from color-inkjet printers will run, that is, the color will bleed off and become part of our projects, but that can make for an interesting effect!

The Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect is the rise in temperature that the Earth experiences because certain gases in the atmosphere (water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane, for example) trap energy from the sun. Without these gases, heat would escape back into space and Earth’s average temperature would be about 60ºF colder. Because of how they warm our world, these gases are referred to as greenhouse gases.

Sembang Science Trip

On 9 July 2010, we started our journey at 7:35am. We had some quiz during our journey and watched a movie - How To Train Your Dragon. We stopped at Hentian Sempah for lunch. I ate chicken rice in Malay style. It was delicious. We continued our journey at 11:45am.

We reached KLCC at 4pm. We visited the Petrosains at 4:30pm. First, we had a "Dark Ride". When i got in to the black cave, I knew why they called it the "Dark Ride". It was seriously dark! In the cave, i watched some video about the climate change. After that, we reached the inner-part of the Petrosains. There, I saw many cool and high technology things that I never see before. It is amazing!

After that, we made registration and had our tea break at 6:30pm. We had a safety briefing and ice breaking at 7:30pm. A moment later, we had our dinner at 8pm. About 8:30pm, the opening ceremony started. We danced gracefully when the music started. After this, the science show - CO2 Show started at about 9:30pm. From this activity, I had learned many about dry ice. The temperature of dry ice is -78.50'C and the CO2 is 0.03% in our earth.

The Chill Out Encounter activity started at 10:30pm. From this activity, I had Ilearned how to make ice-cream. After that, we had our supper at 11pm. We slept at 11:30pm. It was really a wonderful and special night because all of us actually camping in Petrosains KLCC! I think it was the first time for all of us to sleep there.

The next day, we woke up at 6am. We packed our luggage and went to a field near KLCC park. Around 7:30am, the Water War Game began! We all crazied in shooting our friends with bottles filled with water! It was fun!
We had our breakfast at 8am and we took a bath in a mosque. Then, we went to Planetarium Negara at 9am. We watched a movie about space there. Around 11am, we went to visit Pusat Sains Negara. Around 3:45pm, we started our journey back to Kuantan. We had our lunch at Mc Donald's around 4:30pm. Around 8pm, we reached Kuantan safely.

Six of us enjoyed very much during this trip. Although it was only two days and one night, we learned a lot of things about Science and made new friends. We are looking forward for our next trip! :)

Posted by Khoo Qi Xuan (5S)

Change Climate Formula

Making eco enzyme (garbage enzyme) is not new, but many of us do not know that we can also reuse perishable waste. Garbage enzyme is one of the solutions to recover our ozone layer and lower the global temperature. Our school starts and promotes this activity to students especially Year 4, 5 and 6 since April 2010. In this activity, we made a lot of garbage enzyme. From this activity, we know that this is also a way to save the Earth from climate change.
When you start to make garbage enzyme, its catalysts process will release ozone gas (03). O3 can reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and heavy metal that traps heat in the cloud. Hence heat can be released from the Earth, reducing greenhouse and global warming effects. So, having this activity in school helps to reduce perishable waste produce everyday in the school canteen. It is also a good use at our home.

Appreciation

We, Khoo Qi Xuan, Marcus Wong, Wong Zi Xuan, Tan Zhi Xuan, Oi Jia Yi and Lee Hao Yuan, Core Team from SJK(C) Pei Chai, were very enjoy during yesterday's activity. We had learn a lot of knowledge on how to prevent carbon footprint. Thanks to BP officers and teachers, especially Teacher Seri and Teacher Peh, because they gave us a chance to join this programme. We felt glad to be a member of Core Team. Lets save our Earth!

"We Care, We Love....1 School, 1 Planet, 1 Future...."

Post by Carbon Challenge Core Team

The Earth Coloring Contest

Last Friday (02.07.2010), our school organized another interesting program, The Earth Coloring Contest. The coloring contest started at 8:20am, and ended at 9:40 am. Students from Year 4 & 5 participated in the program. We had lots of fun. The picture contained our slogan "We Love, We Care....1 School, 1 Planet, 1 Future" and The Earth. The purpose of this program is to let all of us know that the green house effect is happening and The Earth is sick. Lets together save our beloved Earth!

Post by Carbon Challenge Core Team