How Youth are giving Sustainability a Second Take
[Music]
[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