Rainforest Nursery GC continues to plant the planet....

Planting with UWC Parent Sally Letele, UWC Alumni Zach Rees
and Rainforest Nursery GC members Rahul and Mary Kate.
Photo Aayesha Fazal

Recent weeks have seen more planting by the Rainforest Nursery GC. UWC Parent Sally Letele kindly gave up space in her beautiful garden to raise 4 of our saplings grown from seed in our specialised tree nursery here at Dover. We were joined by recent UWC graduate and Sally's neighbour Zach Rees. Having studied Geography and Environmental Systems & Society at I.B, Zach maybe off to study Environmental Law at university and was very keen to develop his practical interest in conservation. Maybe a UWC education really can help build a sustainable future.

Philanthropist and fellow tree lover
 Kirtida Mekani welcomes the volunteers

Dedicated GC members also planted trees in the half term holiday joining Frazer Cairns and Frankie Meehan and his kids to help UWC Foundation Trustee Kirtida Mekani celebrate 50 years of greening Singapore. 50 trees* were planted along Punggol Promenade, a 4.5 km park connector. Kirtida is a well-known philanthropist with a dedication to environmental causes and is very kindly helping with the development of the nurseries at both campuses. It was great that we we could share in this celebration and we hope to emulate Kirtida by planting as many indigenous trees as we can in the coming years so Singapore becomes famous for real trees rather than giant pretend ones!

*3 species: Syzygium syzygoides (Kelat Hitam), Calophyllum soulattri (Bintangor Bunut) and Planchonella obovatum (Sea Gutta)
All photos: Frankie Meehan

The Meehan triplets did a great job planting this large sapling!

Arjan, Sabrina, Mary Kate and Aayesha doing what they do best.

Rahul sees our saplings off to the Botanic Gardens on the UWC truck

Another good news story for the GC is that over 20 or our indigenous saplings were recently transferred to the Singapore Botanic Gardens for data-logging before they are to be planted out on an old palm oil plantation as part of our joint reforestation project with SBG. It'll be good to see oil palm replaced with native rainforest in SE Asia for once....

UN Night- LEAF's Campaign

UN Night is coming up on the 10th October and LEAF GC is campaigning for another No Plastic initiative. Everyone is highly encouraged to bring your own plates, cutlery and bowls etc. 

LEAF will also be setting up 2 stalls supplying recycled cornware cutlery and lunch boxes that could be borrowed at a deposit on the night. If you return the cutlery and lunch boxes to the stalls, you will receive your money back, as we want to ensure they are recycled externally. Any extra money from the deposits will go to planting trees in Ladakh. 

Here is the break down of the cutlery and lunch box deposit: (as seen in pictures)

Fork + Spoon - $1
Box - $1

Fork + Spoon + Box - $2

We hope that we can continue from last year's successful initiative and move one step forward in reducing UWC's carbon footprint!