Pretoria student outshines rest of Africa in sustainability competition

Albie Nel, a Grade 6 pupil at Maragon Olympus School in eastern Pretoria, has made the staff and other pupils at his school proud by winning a sustainability competition against other participants from across Africa.

Nel recently won the Small Changes for Big Results competition at the third annual IIE MSA Water Symposium held July 4-5.

The aim of the competition was to encourage students to come up with innovative solutions to reduce their school’s impact on the environment.

The IIE MSA Centre for Water and Environment, in collaboration with the Ecological Engineering Institute of Africa (EEIA) and ADvTECH, organised the symposium and competition.

The symposium was held under the theme, “Citizen Science – Uniting Science and Society for Sustainable Solutions”.

Nel embarked on a mission to raise awareness about the importance of recycling at his school.

To achieve this, he devised an experiment that showed that placing recycling bins in strategic, highly visible locations created awareness and interest in recycling and led to more students recycling waste.

Nel won R5,000 for his entry and R25,000 for his school to implement his recycling solution.

The competition was open to all students from ADvTECH preparatory schools and colleges. They could participate as a group or individually.

During the competition no restrictions were imposed, as long as the focus was on sustainability.

“We received video and poster submissions from across Africa, offering solutions to problems such as food and solid waste, water scarcity and energy,” said Tashila Hans, ADvTECH Communications Coordinator.

Hans said Omoshonevho Aliu from Gaborone International School won second prize for a proposed solution to water waste and loss. Third prize went to Lisa Murori from Crawford International School in Kenya, for a solution to food waste and disposal at her school.

She said education is essential to address and respond to sustainability risks such as climate change, pollution and water scarcity.

“With this competition, we hoped to harness the power of education by giving students in our schools the opportunity to use knowledge, creativity and forward-thinking to devise innovative, inventive strategies to address current and future risks to our planet.”

According to Hans, the results showed that students understand that ‘a small change’ can have a big impact if it is implemented consistently.

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