Earth Day sees flurry of green themed events to mark its continuing importance
April 22nd is Earth Day and Only One Planet and its partners want to bring back the conversation about the environment, and what we can do in Cambodia.
To celebrate, Phnom Penh based eco organization – Only One Planet Cambodia – is hosting a series of events including a repair fair and two free screenings of the Emmy-Award winning documentary ‘The Story of Plastic’ in both English & Khmer.
The organization is also preparing to launch a new eco business website to help better educate businesses about practicing green business and offering free recycling at their Pay It Forward recycling stations across the capital.
Owner of Only One Planet, Sandy Kotan, said she hopes the event will bring remind people of the importance protecting the environment.
“It is our hope that we bring focus back onto environmental topics now that people/businesses are slowly recovering from the COVID episode.”
“It is our goal to share as much information as possible, enable people to understand the issues and to take steps to reduce single use plastic,” she added.
One of the events will be the repair fair on April 24th at Gateway House, which will be the first of its kind in Cambodia and will see a variety of repair vendors where people can bring items for repair, which is aimed to discouraged people from throwing things away which likely end up in landfill.
Repair vendors on the day will be fixing everything from shoes, clothing, bicycles to small appliances, bags, jewelry and much more.
Sandy added “this the first ever event in Cambodia focused on 100% environmental products and actions.”
“There will be 19 Retail Vendors – all that either use recycled/upcycled materials in their product, or offer direct, eco-friendly alternatives to single use plastic. There will also be 3 Food Vendors – all plastic free
“We will prohibit use of plastic bags (and limit plastic as much as possible), all glass, cans etc from the event will be recycled, including food waste.”
Sandy said that they are excited to bring this event as they believe that ‘eco conversations’ have quieted since COVID and they want to bring these talks back to the forefront of people’s minds in a positive way.
“By offering good examples, advice and alternatives (as well as information, when the website is launched). We want to help others make eco-friendly choices in their daily lives.”
“Whilst awareness programmes have make a lot of progress in the past few years, much of the messaging has been focused on plastic bags and sometimes cups. We think it’s important to promote businesses that take steps to reduce their single use plastic – so people can ‘vote with their dollars’ by supporting those that share their values.”
She also added that if people cannot make the event, they can always bring their recycling to one of their Pay It Forward Recycling locations, such as the one located at Gateway House. You can check out more about this here and get involved in recycling.
Speaking about the Pay It Forward Recycling group, Sandy said they have saved a huge amount of waste from reaching landfill.
“This is an ongoing programme, started in November last year. Since then, we have diverted over 8,000 kgs of glass from the landfill. We started with 3 locations and now up to 6. Normally, recyclers are charged 500 Riel per kg of (clean) glass dropped off. This covers cost of delivery to Prek Pnov (Gaea facility) and some extra that we put aside to buy supplies for new drop off locations (approx $150 per location for crates, scale, banner and receipts, etc.)
However, to celebrate earth day, One Planet Cambodia is making drop off free for the entire month, meaning it’s even easier to recycle and be green.
Also on the list of events this month, is the double screening of the Emmy-Award winning documentary ‘The Story of Plastic’, that tells the whole story of just how damaging the petrochemical industry is to our planet, from extraction to end-of-life products.
The first screening will be on April 22nd, 2pm, at Legend Cinema Noromall Hall (dubbed in Khmer) With the second screening the day after at Coconut Park at 7pm in English. Both screenings are free
Sandy said that while most messaging about plastic focuses on litter and waste disposal, there is much more to the story than that.
“Only One Planet, with support from the Heinrich Boll Foundation has had the documentary dubbed into Khmer as we feel the conversation about single use plastics needs to broaden to help people understand the true cost of cheap products. We’re showing both the English and Khmer versions in honor of Earth Day.”
Accompanying the eco events this month, will also include the launch a new Eco Business/Information website.
“We are having a few issues with the hosting site but that will be announced as soon as the issues are sorted. Once completed, however, it will continue to help is with our goal, which is to share as much information as possible about environmental issues and enable people to understand the problem and to take steps to reduce their impact on the world, especially by reducing the consumption of plastic,” she added.
For people who want to learn more about the environment or take action to reduce their footprint, Sandy also recommends that people join the monthly meet up, which they can find information about here
Author: Tom Starkey
Tom Starkey is an International Development graduate from Sussex University with 12-years of experience across 4 continents, Tom's goal is that he wants to showcase his love for Cambodia, where he lives, works and now happily calls home.
