Sustainability and the environment

We are the students taking part in WYRED projects at Tel Aviv Summer Youth (the hours in our academic program dedicated to action for the future company).

Our aim is to bring about a new law in the Israeli Parliament, dealing with sustainability and the environment.

Our world is suffering from a serious problem and we are the cause of it! We must stop the process before it becomes irreversible.

Did you know that it takes a thousand years until plastic waste disintegrates? We have 150 million tons of plastic today at sea. If we do not act today, the earth will keep warming, so in Tel Aviv for example – the temperature will rise by 6 degrees Celsius in the next decades! We have about 18 years to make a change. After that it will be too late. Today we already see the effects of climate change. In Siberia – a place known as very cold – there are fires. Antarctica is melting.

Our solution focuses on reducing the use of disposable tools that make up a significant percentage of the plastic waste we have in the sea: We will work to limit usage while encouraging recycling activities. As hard as it sounds, it’s not that hard. Any of us can act for reducing our use.

One of our models is Greta Thunberg – a 16-year-old environmentalist, nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. Thunberg’s protest over the lack of effectiveness in combating global warming has inspired many youths and on every Friday thousands of young people follow to similar protests.

So, in the first phase, we acted here at Tel Aviv University: we arranged a meeting with the head of the Tel Aviv University Youth Science Unit and we put forward some ideas for activities:

• “Green Day” – a day focused on sustainability and the environment. This is something that many schools already have.
• Carbon footprint programs.
• Contests and challenges among the various programs about sustainability and environment.

Meanwhile, in our program, we have encouraged the reduction of the use of plastic bags and disposable tools – you already can see that most of the students use multi-use water bottle .

In addition, we contacted the Israeli organization “Green Trend” (“Megama Yeruka”) – an organization of students acting at various universities in Israel.

We also contacted with one of the political parties (Meretz) to see how the legislation is being promoted, as well as with a lawyer who deals with legislation.