Solar panels for the school roof, a sponsored run to fund more green spaces in the city, and collecting plastic waste for recycling. These are the ways in which students from last year’s 4th class responded to a call for action on Climate Change. In the Zukunftswerkstatt organized by MyClimate and the City of Zürich, schools across the city were invited to enter a competition to find ways to achieve the target of Net Zero Emissions by 2030. Three Geography classes from the Freies Gymnasium took part, each developing and successfully completing a nine-month project working towards a goal of their choosing.
On Tuesday afternoon, the results of the city-wide competition were announced at the Kongresshaus. The Plastic Recycling Project carried out by G4ef Bilingual students took second place. Addressing the 3.4% of global greenhouse emissions caused by the production of plastics, and the 127kg of plastic used per person each year in Switzerland, the group were commended for spreading the word about plastic recycling schemes across, and beyond, the school.
“For the MyClimate competition, our class (G5e/f) decided to collect plastic in our school, in the GZ park in front of our school and by the lake. Migros kindly sent us their plastic collecting bags. In the end we set up a small competition, where the whole school could guess how much the plastic that we had collected weighs, the winner received a FGZ hoodie.
The Jury especially liked the amount of influence we had on other people and how many people were impacted by our project. After all the hard work, it was an amazing feeling to be acknowledged and get second place.”
