The Eco-Rangers project was successfully launched at the Joburg Waste Summit 2013, as well as simultaneously at 200 earmarked schools within the City of Joburg municipality in peri-urban and urban including township and town, targeting Grade3 learners on Wednesday 15 May 2103. The ultimate objective of the project is to fully integrate the Eco Rangers into the school’s programme.

“Young people need opportunities to engage in meaningful activities, have a voice, take responsibility for their actions, and actively participate in civic discourse. Pikitup drives development driven resilience for all and an important quality of life, at the same time promoting the importance of not littering and focusing on the value in recycling for South Africa’ economy”, said Pikitup’s Executive Director for Waste Minimisation Strategy & Programmes, Musa Jack.

A Pikitup initiative, Eco Rangers was conceived as a platform to raise awareness and educate young children about environmental issues facing us today, their impact and how these can be managed into the future. Pikitup has developed characters based on and aligned with the National School Curriculum (NSC). The characters are namely Litter-X (Anti-littering message); Recylo (Recycling message); Lynx (Conservation message) and Sky (Carbon footprint message).

According to a statement released by Pikitup at the launch, positive Youth Development can be described as a philosophical practice that strives to enable programs and or communities to engage youth in a manner that promotes positive and healthy transitions from adolescence to adulthood while enabling youth to reach their full developmental potential.

“So, to entrench understanding among young children that work needs to start now in order to secure our environment in years to come, we have established as an organisation that there is a necessity of galvanising a generation of environmentally conscious ambassadors who will be critical communicators of carrying the information relating to pollution and recycling as the voice of the youth”, said Jack.

There are a total of 1200 primary schools within the City of Joburg and the programme will continue to be tested on a small scale so that the feasibility of conducting a fully-fledged programme aimed at only 200 pilot schools annually will have a positive outcome.

As part of the edutainment, there will be road-show visits to all schools, distribution of the teachers and leaner guides. As an incentive to the participating schools, there is also a competition element which will encourage a healthy competition amongst the schools; learners and teachers.

“Waste has become a resource and must be managed. Pikitup strives to continue to share information with the communities it operates in, using different platforms and providing access to a range of information advice, support and the work that we are currently doing and finding new and creative ways of turning trash into treasure”, concluded Jack.