KUALA LUMPUR: Social enterprise Biji-Biji Initiative and the United States embassy here have been collaborating in the "Planet Us" campaign to empower Malaysian youths to combat climate change through sustainable actions.
Launched in June 2022, the campaign aims to educate and inspire Malaysian youths to play a more proactive role in tackling the climate crisis as well as contributing to an environmentally sustainable future.
The latest edition of the campaign is a three-day workshop that started yesterday at Taman Tugu here.
US Ambassador to Malaysia Brian McFeeters said the campaign had attracted youths' interest and continued to inform Malaysian youths about the importance of a sustainable environment.
"Through Planet Us, the US embassy aims to empower the youth with practical tools and steps to reduce their ecological footprint while encouraging their communities to do the same.
"Thousands of Malaysian youths who have visited the exhibit also made pledges to lead a more sustainable lifestyle.
"With this, we hope that youths will continue to be inspired to take simple actions to protect the environment through this campaign," he said at the launch of the exhibition today.
Chief executive officer of Biji-Biji Initiative, Juliana Adam, said the crux of the organisation's objectives was making sustainability more accessible to Malaysians.
"In line with every programme that is developed by the Biji-Biji Initiative, we ensure that this campaign is aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
"Through our wide network of sustainability and community partners across the country, we provide the key tools and resources to engage participatnt of Planet Us," she said.
Since its inception in June 2022, Planet Us has engaged youths in Sarawak, Kedah, Kelantan, Sabah, Penang, and Kuala Lumpur. Each stop included workshops, panel discussions, community clean-ups and other activities that the public can participate.
The campaign had also secured more than 15,000 environmental pledges on its website, where hundreds of Malaysians have joined its upcycling competition, "Closing the Loop", which provides participants with the knowledge to turn waste materials into useful items.
Winners will also receive microgrants to expand their creations under a three-month mentorship programme by the Biji-Biji Initiative.
First-place winners of the upcycling competition, Cahyo Ihtifazhuddin and Atidya Muhammad Reza, who created a smart waste segregation system using a machine-learning algorithm, said they were inspired to develop it after seeing the large amounts of waste in the sea.
Cahyo, 22, said waste managment was time-consuming and requires proper system management.
"We saw the issue and we thought to ourselves, how do we manage waste after it was collected and mixed up?
"We found out that waste would be manually segregated according to its type, whether it is plastic or glass. This is a very difficult task and is time-consuming to be done manually.
"This is how the idea came about, and we thought that we needed a system that could automate such tasks so humans could focus on other tasks on a daily basis," he said.