No Carbon November at DHZH

To help all staff and students know about what small changes can be made to reduce our carbon footprint, a Bingo Challenge was launched.

A total of 28 Daily Carbon Reduction Activities were laid out in a 7x4 format on a small card, on which students and teachers could win House Points by collecting Climate Action stamps following the campaign rule.

- Do you know which raw material is most used in the world in terms of volume (after water)? Oil, Sand or Wood?

- Sand and gravel are mostly used in construction in things like concrete, glass, asphalt and electronics. The best kind of sand for construction is often found in rivers and lakes, and the mining of it is often unregulated and causes huge damage to these ecosystems.

（Source: Gapminder.org）

Referring to data from the United Nations (the UN) and online resources, a Weekly Carbon Quiz was conducted during tutor time to inspire the students to think about what we take for granted, as well as the zero-waste lifestyles and everyday hurdles to reduce carbon footprint. 

The allocation of scarce resources was the key focus in Economics lessons during the month. For instance, by exploring how different market systems can fail to address the social optimum allocation of resources, students were able to anaylse some vital forms of government interventions, in markets and discuss how these interventions might fail to achieve certain carbon reduction targets. 

The Bingo Card itself also brought awareness to the idea of external benefits, which can be hard for students to conceptualise. By providing the stamps and House Points for the active consumption of daily challenge, which led to positive externalities.

Students in Physics lessons were engaged in a series of activities on sustainability topics in the month, such as energy resources, conscious energy use and the future of energy for countries and for the whole globe. These covered:

• an implementation proposal to the energy sector in Zhuhai to explain some of the topics studied in the classroom and give a few ideas to expand and consolidate a more environment-friendly energy mix in Zhuhai city and in the Guangdong Province
• energy mix prediction and comparison of several countries and areas, based on their available natural resources
• discussion on feasible solution for the population with no access to electricity
• study on the China’s 2060 Carbon-neutral plan to learn more about the complete elimination of fossil fuel emissions, and the most challenging parts for implementation

Discussion and inspiration on climate change also spread among Y10 students.

Taking part in an English haiku challenge around the topic and the Bingo Challenge, Y10 students learnt to improve their language skills in a new format, under a global context of sustainability.