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300 Tobolsk school students took part in Green Rallies

4 june 2021

As part of SIBUR's investment program, the Formula for Good Deeds, volunteers from Tobolsk’s chapter of Green Brush, a nation-wide social project for early career guidance at school, held environmental literacy and safety culture quests and master classes.

The Green Rallies took place at Tobolsk’s Schools 16 and 9. They were attended by about 300 schoolchildren. The project is a series of interactive and engaging lectures, quests and master classes where children are introduced to the professions of an environmental engineer, an occupational safety and health specialist, and a geologist.

We got introduced to the Green Brush initiative two years ago in Tobolsk at a city festival organized by SIBUR. At this juncture, as part of the Formula for Good Deeds program, the project’s volunteers are engaged in conducting a series of master classes and motivational lectures at our city’s schools. It is very important and necessary to teach children how to think and behave with their environment in mind, to instill in them a culture of safety – at school, in the streets and at home, Elena Belskaya, head of ZapSibNeftekhim LLC’s Government Relations Department noted.

Young residents of Tobolsk were taught useful and eco-friendly skills with the help of various visual aids. Thanks to an interactive model of a house, children learned to identify and measure electromagnetic radiation, microclimate and noise levels, as well as identify key household risks. At the "Save Gosha" station, students could practice their first aid skills using a cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) simulator. At the master class entitled "The Second Life of Waste", they learned how and why to sort waste and were taught to distinguish between different types of plastics. During the "Water Guessing" master class, its participants could put themselves in the shoes of real environmentalists carrying out water quality testing by examining water samples from the Irtysh River on their own.

We were delighted to see Tobolsk students display sincere interest, excitement, and a real desire to learn new things, Vera Kuzubov, president of the Green Brush Foundation, said. We thank SIBUR for the opportunity to have a conversation with children about safety culture and environmental responsibility.

Tobolsk’s residents Vika and Pasha Gusev, finalists of the 2019 Green Brush contest, were present at the opening of Green Rallies. They spoke about their experience of participating in the contest and the career guidance week in Moscow, something that helped 15-year-old Vika decide what occupation she would want to be in in the future. The young lady was firm in her determination that her true calling was environmental conservation.

I really liked this project because it gives me the opportunity to learn a lot, and to decide what one’s future profession will be, Vassilissa Nazarova, a School 9 student, shared her thoughts.

Thanks to this event, I learned that many types of waste – something that we are used to thinking of as trash – can actually be recycled. Incredibly, it turns out that used plastic such as caps, PET bottles, shampoo and shower gel bottles can be reused to manufacture other useful products, Karina Tagaeva, a School 9 student, said.

Having taken part in the Green Rallies events, school students will continue working in an online format perfecting their projects and drawings featuring the topic of safety and environment as part of the Green Brush contest’s program. The children will be implementing their ideas under the tutelage of experienced experts. The contest’s finalists and winners will end up traveling to and spending a week in Moscow participating in a career guidance week and attending the grand opening of an exhibition of projects and drawings at one of the capital’s central locations.

In 2021, such Green Rallies have already taken place in Kstovo, Dzerzhinsk, and Blagoveshchensk (Republic of Bashkortostan) as part of the Environmental Protection focus area of SIBUR's social investment program, the Formula for Good Deeds. In early September they will also be held in Svobodny and Tomsk.

SIBUR has been paying a lot of attention to promoting a proper environment-friendly culture in the regions where the company operates. Thanks to project titled "The Second Life of Plastics: A Reset", in 2019 residents of Tobolsk were offered an opportunity to have their household plastic waste recycled. In 2020, the project was complemented with a whole series of game-type activities for family members and teachers operating out of pandemic-caused self-confinement, including various eco-quests and waste recycling activities. At the end of last year, Tobolsk saw a Recycling Workshop open at the local Quantorium. Local residents will be able to go there to observe the full cycle of polymer recycling and to make their own products from recycled materials including such items as toys, dishes, notebooks, and other types of items. The very first educational classes for residents of Tobolsk that were set at the Recycling Workshop and focused on how to create useful products from recycled plastic have already taken place.