How Youth are giving Sustainability a Second Take

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[Music]

[Applause]

so

we’ve all heard about the climate crisis

we’ve all seen these pictures

showing animals covered in plastic or

the giant garbage patch in the middle of

the ocean

but we knew we needed to do something

about it so a group at my school who are

part of rotary’s interact club

were entering the sustainable

development challenge a couple of years

ago and we’re coming up with ideas for

their project

all of the people in that group were so

inspiring one of those people kenisha

charles

who was the president of the club at the

time introduced the idea of a

sustainable recycling workspace in a

shipping container

the idea came from a company in europe

who originally had the model for this

workspace

we called ours operation take two we

ended up winning the sustainable

development challenge which had a five

thousand dollar prize

we began working out the logistics of

the project and brought it to our

principal and vice principal who were on

board from the beginning

we received huge support from our school

and inevitably the community

which led to big steel box partially

donating our current workspace

inside our workspace we have two

machines the first machine

takes all the plastic recycling we

collect from around the school and

shreds it down

to then be put into molds and melted

down by the second machine

this is the type of model that we’re

using we ended up hearing about

auditions for dragon’s den which if you

don’t know is a tv show where

entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas

to potential investors

so we went to the audition and after two

very long weeks we heard back from the

producers

and before we knew it we were on a

flight to toronto to film on the set of

dragon’s den

a lot of the advice we’re given as young

people is very contradictory

we’re told to talk about things that are

important and educate ourselves on

things that we want to talk about

but as soon as we get out there and

start discussing these things we’re told

that we’re just kids and

we don’t know what we’re talking about

i’ve tried having conversations with a

lot of adults about things that are

really going on in the world right now

instead of listening to what i have to

say i’m being told that my opinion

doesn’t matter as much as theirs does

because they’re older and more

experienced although i may be more

informed than they are on the topic

these are the same people that are

telling me to speak out for what i

believe in and share my opinion

how are we supposed to grow up and learn

about things that really matter

if every time we try to talk about them

we’re told exactly how to think and act

if i wanted to know how you want me to

react to something i would have asked

okay that was a little harsh but we need

to get the point across that you telling

us how to feel about everything isn’t

going to help us form our own opinions

now along the way we reached a lot of

roadblocks usually when it came to

relying on adults to trust us and allow

us to make big decisions

for example no matter how eager we were

to get things started

it seemed as though our ideas weren’t

being taken into account

but one of the things that really did

empower our group to keep going was the

support we received from around the

school

of course a lot of people still think of

us as just a bunch of kids who don’t

know what they’re doing

but that feeling that someone believes

in you and that you’re not alone makes

all the difference

so every march there’s a conference in

toronto called canada we want

it brings together youth from all over

the country to have a say in huge

decisions that really affect us

i met so many amazing youth at this

conference that really knew what they

wanted to happen

and it made me realize that once we set

our minds to something we can literally

do anything

one of the best things about the

conference was the adult allies that

knew we weren’t just saying any of this

stuff

we actually want things to change and

we’ll do whatever it takes to make it

happen

okay so if a group of high school

students can create a plastic recycling

workspace out of

a metal box in their school’s courtyard

do you think you can encourage youth to

actually speak their minds

maybe it’s time you let us do the

talking