By Wannapa Phetdee

Wastewater from washbasins need no longer be wasted.

Students at Bodindecha (Sing Singhaseni) 2 School in the Wang Thonglang area of Bangkok plan to take the unwanted water and use it to flush toilet bowls, thus saving resources.

"We'll run wastewater tubes from washbasins on the upper floors to a wastewater-treatment tank. After being treated, it'll be released into a grease-trap tank before being stored in another tank, from where it will be used to flush toilets on the lower floors," said Krittaphon Achineethong-kham, 15, one of four students from the school who initiated the system.

Tackling water wastage

The project arose after a group of students noticed water emptied from washbasins was being wasted and that water used to flush toilets was being used in a wasteful manner.

Krittaphon said he and his friends had already finished a model of their water-reuse system and that the school was preparing to install a full-scale system in its building.

"With our system, wastewater from washbasins won't go to waste. Apart from installing it in our school building, we plan to distribute it to people and shopping centres in our community," he said.

Meanwhile, another project, initiated by students from Chaiyabhumbhakchumphon School, is seeing roofs built from used plastic water bottles, thus reducing rubbish and preserving the environment.

Reusing plastic

"It takes about 100 years for plastic to disintegrate, and almost 1,000 plastic bottles of drinking water are used at our school each day. So we thought about how we could make use of the huge numbers instead of throwing them away," said Teerapong Damkengsuntorn, 17, one of the project's creators.

Nuntawan Duangpamorn, 16, another of the creators, said they had used more than 1,000 used bottles to build a roof over an announcement board six months ago, costing the school only Bt1,000 for screws.

Involving the community

They are asking pupils to give them their empty water bottles so they can build another roof over a pavilion in the grounds.

"We'll promote our idea to people in the local community, too," Nuntawan said.

These two examples are among 40 environmental projects to win awards from the Song Bulsook Foundation as part of its "Green Generation" campaign on the theme "I Can Act Green" aimed at young people.

--Daily Xpress/ANN