Saphal Report

The Saphal MAD project aims to make the school’ practices more eco-friendly. This year we achieved this in 2 ways: by reinstating the Paper Project—setting up cardboard boxes in every classroom and encouraging paper recycling among students and establish a recycling system in coordination with the school housekeeping and the NGO Acorn—as well as by making citronella solution in our school’s Chemistry lab, using the extract as a fragrance or a mosquito-repellent. Saphal members grew fresh batches of lemongrass (a plant from the citronella family known to have mosquito repellent properties) which they brought to school every Tuesday and Friday to undergo fractional distillation so that we could eventually obtain Citronella oil. After speaking to students, teachers, the administration, and the housekeeping, we ensured recycle paper boxes in each of the classrooms. Subsequently, we spoke to grades 5 through 10 about the importance using these boxes. To persuade students to use recycle boxes we raised their level of environmental awareness by linking the bleak situation indicated by statistics to the value of recycling. We then segregated paper collected from the recycle boxes into fresh, semi-used, and unusable, the last of which was handed over to the housekeeping to send to Acorn for recycling treatment. We used the fresh and semi-used paper to make notebooks which we sold during CAS Fete.