Since 2018, 18th March has been declared as World Recycling Day. The aim of this day is to educate the public, especially the youth, about the importance of recycling and to promote the idea of waste as a resource in order to preserve the Earth's precious natural resources.
The rate of consumption of raw materials, the Earth's natural resources, has tripled since 1970, while the world's population has "only" doubled in that time. We are heating the atmosphere: the extraction and processing of 92 billion tonnes of raw materials consumed each year is responsible for 53% of global warming emissions and nearly 90% of biodiversity loss. Environmental use has already exceeded the ecological capacity of our planet, with humanity using up 1.7 Earth's ecological capacity in a year, half its future.
To mark this day, the Green University Program of the UP is organizing a campus visit to all 10 faculties to educate UP citizens on recycling through innovative activities, including selective waste collection and the correct method of collecting used cooking oil, among others. In these areas, the Green University Program of the UP provides, among other activities, a waste sorting game to raise awareness on the correct way to sort waste. In a short but meaningful quiz, UP citizens can test their knowledge and learn the correct method of the collection of used cooking oil.
But recycling is not only a priority for teachers and students at the faculties. The series of campus visits started with a fun fashion show called "Gicci Ricci Eco Fashion Show" by the 8th grade students of the Deák Ferenc Primary School of the University of Pécs, in the lobby of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Sciences, where the students showed off their handmade creative clothes designed in the spirit of recycling. The importance of recycling is taught to students already in the first grade at the UP's Practical Schools. In the first grade, the class 1.c of the No.1 Practical Primary School of the University of Pécs made colourful and imaginative fortune wheels for the campus visits, through which UP citizens can playfully test their "pickiness" and their knowledge of how and where to collect different types of waste.
We should not forget that an important part of recycling is to give a "new life" to the objects we already use. In this context, UP citizens can also bring books that are no longer used and are just "resting" on the shelf, which can be donated to the Babits Mihály Teachers' Training Practice School of the University of Pécs and the University of Pécs Library and Knowledge Centre for extended use and life.
Gallery:
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Sciences
Faculty of Business and Economics
Class 1.c of the No.1 Practical Primary School of the University of Pécs
