As a local business with a deep love of Fiji, FIJI Water hates to see our bottles — or anyone else’s — spoiling that country’s natural beauty.

That’s why we’ve created the NWVL Recycling Programme (NWVL stands for Natural Waters of Viti Limited, our bottling division in Fiji). The programme’s goal is simple: to develop a culture of recycling in Fiji, with a near-term goal of recycling 50% of all PET plastic bottles (ours and others’) in Fiji by 2014.

To achieve this goal, we came up with the School Recycling Program, an innovative competition to encourage school children to collect plastic bottles for recycling.

Educating Future Recyclers and Environmentalists

Just like anywhere else, Fiji struggles with how to educate its population about recycling. By directly engaging children, the FIJI Water program both increases recycling locally and helps instill good recycling habits in the next generation.

The first pilot stage of the program began last October, with eight schools participating. At the end of a six-week period, the school children who collected the most kilograms of PET plastic won prizes for their school. Over the six weeks, close to 3,000 students collected 2,670 kilos of plastic — over 108,000 PET bottles!

The winning school, Namosau Methodist, won a computer, laser printer, $1000 worth of building materials, and $500 worth of sporting equipment. Second and third place schools also won big, and every school that participated received $500 worth of stationery supplies.

One student, Shakil Naidu, a Class 3 student at Namosau Methodist, rallied his parents, friends, and family members to hire a carrier to deliver all the plastic bottles that they had gathered over the first four weeks, a total of 65 kilograms of PET, or the equivalent of 2,600 bottles.  Naidu won a prize for his efforts, and helped his school come in first.

Due to the success of the pilot program in late 2010, this year the recycling program has been expanded to an additional 9,000 students in fifteen schools across the western half of the Fijian islands.

We at FIJI Water are committed to giving back to the community and feel that environmental stewardship is each and everyone’s responsibility. The School Recycling Program presents enormous potential for educating Fiji’s children on the importance of recycling while also channeling revenue from used plastic bottles straight back into the education system.