EcoTEDx in AUCA: eco-activists from 5 universities of the Kyrgyz Republic shared their projects in the field of waste management

June 7, 2022

On May 27, the AUCA Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) gathered 7 speakers from 5 universities of the country, including Bishkek, Naryn and Chui region, on the campus at once. The speakers were eco-active youth, who in the TEDx format told the audience about the implementation of their projects. All projects are aimed at reducing waste and promoting sustainable consumption in Kyrgyzstan, are being successfully implemented and have already shown their first results.

 The AUCA team talked about the AUCA Green project and their first achievements in collecting waste paper, batteries, plastic and electronic waste. It turned out that some other universities in Kyrgyzstan are also already working on the separate collection of certain types of waste and their delivery for processing.

For example, at KTMU “Manas” students collect waste paper and batteries (their eco-club “Biota” created a wonderful motivating video about the dangers of batteries, why, how and where they need to be collected).

The University in Central Asia has been collecting plastic and paper separately since 2019! Moreover, the volunteers of their Eco-warriors eco-club teach this to school students, teachers and ordinary residents of Naryn, fruitfully cooperate with the city hall and the Naryn “Tazalyk” enterprise. As a result, thanks to the efforts of volunteer students, 600 eco-boxes and 21 eco-containers were installed in Naryn and 25 villages of the Naryn region, garbage was sorted in 10 schools, 2 colleges, 2 universities in Naryn, as well as in the mayor's office and the state administration!

Several teams told about their very interesting and promising start-ups: (1) about the processing of receipts - students together with professors from KTMU “Manas” have developed such a technology (PAPER2U project), (2) about the production of benches from used plastic, which is planned to be launched this summer (Kirpi ecoproject) and (3) creation of fabric eco-friendly covers for books and laptop cases from sewing production waste to replace plastic (the project Custom cover IU “Ala-Too"). The last team demonstrated that already 2 months after the launch of the eco–project, it can also bring money - fabric covers sewn to individual orders are gaining popularity in Bishkek.

 

Student of KNU K.I. Skryabin Begimai Tokonbekova, ecology and blogger, share about her experience of volunteering and participating in various environmental campaigns and events, motivating participants to be eco-active.

The event was attended mainly by young people - students from universities and schools, professors. According to the participants' feedback, the event, thanks to the speakers and their motivating examples, Q&A sessions after each speech, created such a positive, friendly, inspiring, energizing atmosphere that many participants wanted to implement waste management projects in their schools, colleges and universities. This was facilitated by the exchange of contacts (networking) at the end of the event.

It was nice that a whole team of eco-activists from the Chui region, 25 volunteers of the Youth Center “New Format” from the village of Belovodski, came to AUCA especially for our event to exchange experience and inspiration. Their head Avaz Ormonov, in turn, shared how their center is also introducing separate waste collection on the ground.

The 1st EcoTEDx was successful and showed how important it is for educational institutions of Kyrgyzstan to gather at one site and exchange knowledge and experience, therefore, the Center of Civic Engagement of AUCA plans to hold such events regularly.

If you are also implementing your own eco-project or start-up (not only in the field of waste management) and want others to know about it, share experiences, find partners, create a joint project, then write to us by email: cce@auca.kg or lazutkina_m@auca.kg (Margarita Lazutkina). Together we can do more!

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