I love seeing young people take action and jump in to help repair global issues. You don’t need to step onto the world stage like Greta Thunberg in order to make a difference. Every action you do in daily life, be it consciously choosing to forego the plastic straw or raising awareness and educating your community is making a difference to how our future will look.
Recently three students at Tsinghua International School (THIS) have created a series of cartoons to raise awareness on issues regarding environmental awareness. Meet Alicia Gao (grade 12), Andrew Li (grade 11), and Chelsea Wang (grade 12), creators of the Sustainable Spartans!
The Sustainable Spartans are a group of international relations students at THIS. Anyone who cares about our community and everyone who wants to make our community more sustainable could also be a Sustainable Spartan.
Through their cartoon featuring an adorable character called Leafy, the Sustainable Spartans teach their peers the importance of sustainability. “Sustainability is especially important because all of us share this home we call Planet Earth. Specifically, we should all devote time and energy to sustainability because we need to make efforts to create a better environment for not only us but also future generations. Creating this environment where people aren’t threatened by global warming, rising sea levels, flooding, and natural disasters is crucial to have peace. Time is important because only with time will we ever create a truly sustainable and non-rushed environment and energy is important because we need to dedicate effort in order to accomplish this goal,” says Li.
The group started the project as part of their International Relations class. “In our International Relations (IR) class, we have three units. The first unit broadly introduced IR and talked about concepts such as IR theories (e.g. realism, liberalism) as well as sovereignty. This unit defined the concept of “state” and differentiated it with “nation” and also broadly talked about the role of the international community and the UN, such as through the right to protection, where the international community intervenes in states that have failed to protect its people. Unit two focused on global peace because, given the concept of state, conflict naturally follows. Conflict requires states to compromise together and seek diplomatic solutions to complex and nuanced problems. This unit first dove into types of conflict, rules regarding wars (e.g. the Geneva Conventions), and justifications for war before discussing the solutions. Finally, unit three, which we just began, is on 21st-century issues; we’ve already talked about development and how the definition is multifaceted. All in all, these units culminate in two large projects: one ongoing one where we pick a country case-study and apply the concepts learned to our chosen country (I picked South Sudan), as well as one for the 2nd semester where we seek to promote sustainability within our communities – this project!” Li tells Jingkids. Instead of lecturing at students, the class inspires students to look, discover and find the global issues that they’re most passionate about.
Chelsea Wang, the artist behind Leafy, designs and illustrates the character each week. “I find inspiration through my research and knowledge and share my findings with the readers through Leafy and his friends,” says Wang. The Leafy cartoons will continue to run through March and April once a month and the Sustainable Spartans team always welcomes new ideas from their readers. “We are very excited to have our readers try to reach out and learn more. Readers can submit their ideas through the comments section under the WeChat official posts (THISSTUCO), and some can reach out to us personally. We are still working on more outlets for the comic such as Instagram, by then it will be more accessible and readers can comment or direct message the account to insert what they would like to know more about. Gradually, we want to make sure the readers are engaged and inspired to have questions about how we can reach the sustainable development goals.”
But the Sustainable Spartans isn’t only spreading their message through social media. Wang, Li, and Gao each shared simple everyday suggestions so that we can help do our part to save our planet.
Alicia Gao – One of my suggestions would be not ordering the free chopsticks when you get takeout. When ordering takeout, remember to check the box that says no need for tableware, so we can save the trees from making these wood chopsticks.
Andrew Li – One suggestion is using less. Whether this means bringing your own bag to a shopping center, recycling things for longer (such as electronics), purchasing only what is necessary, and giving everything a second home, using less helps to reduce the waste going to landfills and dumps. This simple change is very small, but requires effort to become routine. This could even extend to using food scraps as fertilizer in gardens – finding a second use for normally useless things is a great way to be more sustainable.
Chelsea Wang – Something so simple but many ignore is to make sure your garbage goes where they should go, and I mean that as sorting your garbage. Though Beijing has implemented rules on working towards a sustainable city, many places are still struggling to enforce the rule. But you have to understand that so many problems can be eased with sorting your garbage, not only allowing some materials to be reused, but also to be disposed properly to minimize the effects. So many of the sustainability goals can be worked towards with simply recycling and sorting your garbage.
Follow the Sustainable Spartans by scanning the QR code below.
KEEP READING: How Schools Make Dining Sustainable — and How You Can Do Your Part
Images: Courtesy of Sustainable Spartans
