THIS shower head can talk.

Step into the shower stall, and you'll hear a voice telling you about the water you can save if you turn off the tap while soaping yourself.

Turn off the tap, says the shower head, and you stand to save '60 litres of water'.

You can also save water by using thimbles for your tap, it adds, or by switching to shower taps that turn off by themselves after a while.

But it isn't talking the way you and I speak, of course. Once you enter the motion-sensor-fitted shower stall, a speaker embedded in the shower head plays these recorded messages.

Such interactive exhibits got people talking at the opening of Marsiling Secondary School's Environment Education Hub last Wednesday.

The environment-themed gallery, the only one of its kind in a school in Singapore, has received visitors from as far as Japan and China.

Other schools, and the public, can arrange group visits to the gallery.

One of the most eye-catching exhibits was a 2.2m-tall rubbish bin, which represent the amount of waste the average Singaporean makes in a year.

That's about 300kg of trash, going by last year's figures from the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources.

'It's surprising,' said guest-of-honour Bukit Panjang MP Teo Ho Pin. 'Many people don't realise how much waste they make.'

The gallery, as well as other green initatives by Marsiling, are the brainchild of principal Loke Chee Pheng.

Mr Loke, 40, was inspired by Al Gore's 2006 documentary on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth.

All Secondary 1 and 2 students at the school go through an environmental studies module.

'I'm not Al Gore,' said Mr Loke. 'But since I'm a principal, it's a good chance to spur change.

'If Singapore really wants to go green, we need to start with our schools.'

His efforts have paid off, and some students have converted to the green cause.

Students Matthew Leong and Nur Aqibah, both 15, went on a school trip to Yunan, China last December to learn more about going green.

There, they saw how a farm used manure as biofuel to power a kitchen.

They also planted a fig tree each - a symbolic gesture, agreed Matthew, but an affirming one.

Something bigger

'If we each do our bit for the planet,' said Matthew, 'It will all add up to something bigger.'

Both admitted that they weren't always this environmentally conscious.

Said Nur: 'I used to switch on the lights, the air con, and left them running even when I left the room.

'But now I'm the one reminding my parents to save energy.'

Marsiling Secondary has 72 Environment Champions - student leaders who spread the green message to fellow students, friends and neighbours.

Said one such Environment Champion, Taqiuddin Munawwar, 16, who went around the Marsiling neighbourhood last year urging residents to convert to energy-saving lightbulbs: 'I feel like I've changed their lives for the better.

'It's also good for the poorer residents. By switching to energy-efficient lights, they can save money.'

He showed The New Paper a paper tree made from handmade recycled paper.

Pasted on the board were paper leaves that students had painstakingly recycled by hand - soaking, blending, and moulding the used paper.

Written on these leaves were pledges to waste less and recycle more.

Taqiuddin smiled: 'Won't you pledge to save the earth too?'

Han Yongming, newsroom intern

This article was first published in The New Paper.