Friday, January 2, 2009

New Year's eve meeting


New year's eve meeting.
All the members were asked politely by Farhanah to return to school on the 31st of December for a meeting. Unless you have been living under a rock since the beginning of time, you would know that the 31st of December is the last day of every year. It is day where people gather at shopping malls with their friends and family to end the year with a bang-literally. It is also a day when people get to watch legal fireworks. Many people brave the traffic jams to get to these shopping malls because they are eager to welcome the New Year. As for school-attending kids like us, we're just too busy squeezing the last bits of fun into what little is left of our holidays. Of course, most people's definition of school holiday fun does not include going back to school to pull weeds, but oh well, it is our duty to make sure the herbs live. I think many people adopted my mentality-hence the low attendance. The only difference was, Farhanah spoke to me with a threatening tone.

Besides weeding the herbs garden, we were also called back to discuss important matters like the our preferences for the T-shirts, the logo, our ideas for environmentally-friendly filing as well and durable plant labels.

We decided on a collared t-shirt with a simple brown background. Our names and school name will be printed on the right and left sleeve respectively. Besides that, we are currently in the midst of deciding on a witty message which will be proudly displayed on the front of the t-shirt. Our logo will be printed on the back. The logo was designed by our very own art extraordinaire-Samantha. She designed a logo with 5 different colour combinations for us to pick from. Naturally, the most colourful combination won with the maximum amount of votes it could get. There were 5 water droplets-two of them were light blue in color, while each of the other water droplets were either dark blue, dark, green, or light green.

Here’s what each of the 5R’s mean:

Reuse- tins, cans, paper, CD’s, bottles. These can be used to make useful and beneficial items.

Recycle-paper, plastic bottles, etc.

Reduce- Reduce the usage of recyclable items when and if possible.

Rethink- Everyone should think twice before using or doing something which causes the depletion of natural resources

Replant-Replanting is important to increase the amount of oxygen in the air.

The number of water droplets-5-represents our motto which is 5R - Reuse, Recycle, Reduce, Rethink, Replant. Cool, huh? Light blue represents water; light green represents plants, while dark blue and green represents our earth. Next to the water droplets is a yellow circle. It represents the sun, which as everyone very well knows, is the primary source of energy on earth.

The next thing on the president’s checklist of things to discuss is environmentally-friendly filing. After all, the purpose of this entire competition is to save the earth-one plant at a time. Using unrecycled paper results in the untimely death of many matured trees. It is a shame to see trees which have been providing oxygen for centuries being chopped down to produce paper. As a result, we have decided to start printing our herbs research findings on used paper before pasting them onto homemade recycled paper. Kudos to Azmina and Ili for undertaking the tedious chore of making enough recycled paper to keep this club running. As for files, we think that plastic files aren’t environmentally friendly in the sense that they cannot be recycled after we stop using them. Making our own files out of cardboard, thick ropes, and metal rings is a much better alternative. Besides, it looks good and it stands out!

We decided to make our plant labels out of used CD’s. After all, these CD’s will only end up in the trash sooner or later, so we decided to put them to good use. We will write the names of the plant on the shiny surfaces of the CD’s in permanent marker before covering the CD’s in plastic to protect them from the forces of nature. Well, not completely, but at least we won’t be seeing faded plant names anytime soon.