Iskandar Malaysia Ecolife Challenge: low-carbon education for teachers and students

Environmental education in Malaysia is not a specific subject in the school curriculum. Rather, its general principles are dispersed across the whole of the curriculum. Consequently, teachers without adequate awareness regarding environmental issues may not make an effort to educate students on the importance of preservation and conservation of the environment, and may refrain from inculcating sustainable practices. The Iskandar Malaysia (IM) Ecolife Challenge is an initiative taken under a low-carbon policy. Its ambitions are twofold: first, to educate both students and teachers on low-carbon issues, and second, to impart the tools with which a low-carbon society may be developed in the IM region. The program took place in 2014, over a period of 1 month, with 80 primary schools participating across IM. The activities covered recycling, saving water and saving electricity, as well as the completion of a workbook designed to raise consciousness of local and global environmental concerns. A survey conducted before and after the program, with 5641 (36.1 %) of 15,623 primary sixth grade students (12 year olds) who had participated in the program, showed that their low-carbon practices had increased by 8 %, while their teachers’ awareness had increased by 5 %. The survey also showed that the total weight of recycling items collected during the period of intervention was 45,540 kg, while a total of 90,857 kWh of electricity and 767.85 m³ of water were saved by the schools. If such an initiative was to be implemented across all 228 primary schools in the IM region, the implications are considerable: a total of 322 kt CO₂ could potentially be reduced in 1 month, which would help to achieve a low-carbon society.