INTERVIEW: We Talk to Iwastology About Their Waste and Consumption Education Curriculum

We recently had the chance to catch up with <a href="http://iwastology.org/">Iwastology</a>, a motivated team of three young men working to teach the world about recycling and re-shaping the notions of waste. Headquartered in the Philippines, their project takes a grassroots approach, challenging high school students to question waste and consumption patterns by employing media and other forms of communication. Read on for our interview with Alex Pritz, Arcie Mallari and Christian Elliot, the founders of Iwastology, and see how these youngsters are changing the way their peers think about waste.

Last year Arcie Mallari was studying at McGill University as a Sauve Scholar, searching for ways to create a more dynamic and engaging way to teach marginalized students in the Philippines.

Arcie and his Silid Aralan Inc. team have transformed various locally donated spaces into engaging, alternative learning environments. A once abandoned municipal building has been reconstructed into a colorful haven where students come after school to experience the fun of learning and how it applies to daily life. The room is filled with scavenged pieces of furniture, shelves made by students' parents who have construction skills and books donated from various sources. A yellow color-theme happily dominates the walls and brings life to the rooms.

After studying at University of the Philippines, Arcie chose to live in the slums surrounding Payatas for three years. Pictured above, Payatas is a large mountain that was formed from Manila's trash in Quezon City. In 2000, an avalanche occurred killing hundreds of families, many of whose bodies remain buried in the heap. The site is officially closed but a new trash mountain, Montalban, has begun mounting right by its side.

"A lot of the students we're working with in the Philippines come from families that have worked as trash scavengers at a local dump site and for them garbage is not only a part of everyday life, it can be a means to a paycheck," explains Alex.

Many of the Filipino students live in housing provided by the National Housing Authority (NHA), as seen above. The NHA charges tenants 500 pesos per month (just over US$10), a sum which the tenants struggle to come up with each month.

Trash collection trucks make up the majority of traffic in the region. Their exhaust mixed with the tropical humidity pollute the air, resulting in an extremely high rate of lung cancer.

On average, scavengers make about US$5-6 per day from which they must use to feed their family and hope to save whatever they can for the month's rent. NHA dwellings are a luxury for many who have spend years living in makeshift conditions on the street.

Filipino public schools tend to have few resources, a stark contrast to St. George's of Montreal.

"The students are asked to portray a message through what they see from the pure visual realities of their environment, and are able to develop organic understandings of environmental realities," explains Christian.

Students exchange experiences of how waste and recycling are managed within their own cultures. For instance, in the Philippines waste is regularly recycled into daily life. Jeepneys, the country's most popular means of public transportation, are welded together from scrap metal.

Looking to the future, Alex explains, "In terms of goals, I'd like to see this spread to other schools. We aim to have Iwastology be a completely self-sufficient curriculum model, using local university students to teach the high school students, and using locally sourced volunteer labor for the student-led projects."