Here at Boomerang Bags, we work on building a sustainable community within our service and our school. Because of our close connection with sustainability, our service goes hand in hand with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically focusing on numbers 11 and 12, sustainable cities and communities, and responsible consumption and production respectively.
Our service works on changing our consumption habits, swapping from single-use plastics to reusables, and learning how to repurpose old fabrics into something new.
The plastic problem that we face is no stranger to us. In our rapidly developing world, we consume more and more every day and most of the time we aren’t aware of the byproducts of what we consume: the packaging, the energy spent, and the waste produced. Single-use materials like plastic and styrofoam are used because they’re cheap and easy, but the costs to the environment are detrimental to all – not just us humans, but the wildlife on land and in the sea. Sea turtles choke on plastic bags, seals get strangled by six-pack rings from beer cans. The only solution? We address the root of the problem: us. Our consumption habits are slowly destroying the world, but we can lessen the impacts with the choices we make in our everyday lives – bringing our own bag, cup, even going vegetarian once a week.
And here we are, a group of students here at UWCSEA East, trying to take charge of our consumption problems, starting small within our school but hoping that we can one day influence the communities around us to change their habits for the better, one small step at a time.