As the world cel­e­brat­ed World En­vi­ron­ment Day yes­ter­day, the Unit­ed Na­tions called on peo­ple every­where to do some­thing to take care of the Earth.

For the stu­dents of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Club of the St Joseph’s Con­vent in St Joseph, how­ev­er, every day is World En­vi­ron­ment Day.

Guardian Me­dia sat down with five mem­bers of the club, pres­i­dent Sarah Ap­ple­white, trea­sur­er Kay­la-Marie Solomon, sec­re­tary Shek­inah Trim and mem­bers Liyen Sanchez and Hay­ley Valadere, along with their su­per­vis­ing teacher Sim­mi­ka Seecha­ran-Bis­s­ram, at the school on Tues­day for a dis­cus­sion on their dri­ve.

All the girls are just 14-years-old but de­spite their age, they are try­ing to make to a dif­fer­ence by pro­mot­ing the pro­tec­tion and preser­va­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment.

Seecha­ran, who is al­so the school’s Bi­ol­o­gy and En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies teacher, was a past pres­i­dent of the club as St Joseph’s is her al­ma mater.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view, Trim ex­plained why the club, which has been in ex­is­tence for over 20 years, is im­por­tant to her.

“I am very con­cerned for the earth with all the plas­tic that we use and the dam­age it is caus­ing to the en­vi­ron­ment. I re­al­ly want to be able one day to join the fight in clean­ing the oceans be­cause very soon we will have is­lands of trash in the seas all over the world,” Trim said.

Sanchez said she be­lieves the pol­lu­tion clog­ging the plan­et’s wa­ter­ways and oceans are hav­ing a dev­as­tat­ing ef­fect not on­ly on the en­vi­ron­ment but on the hu­man pop­u­la­tion as well.

“The plas­tics that we are us­ing and dis­card­ing are com­ing back in the food we are eat­ing, so we are do­ing this to our­selves,” she said.

In their quest to make the plan­et a bet­ter place, the girls have in­stalled a wa­ter fil­tra­tion sys­tem that pro­vides clean wa­ter for the school in or­der to cut down on the use of sin­gle-use plas­tic bot­tles.

Al­though bot­tled wa­ter is still be­ing sold at the school, Ap­ple­white said they have come up with ways to re­duce and re­cy­cle those as well.

“We en­cour­age every­one to use the fil­tered wa­ter sys­tem. There is a fee of $5 per stu­dent for the month or $20 for the term for un­lim­it­ed re­fills, so that cuts down sig­nif­i­cant­ly on the need to buy bot­tled wa­ter. We al­so have re­cy­cle bins all around the school and every week we go around the class­es and col­lect the bot­tles for re­cy­cling.”

They be­lieve that the same wa­ter fil­tra­tion sys­tem, if im­ple­ment­ed in pub­lic spaces and shop­ping malls, can make a ma­jor im­pact on the amount of sin­gle-use plas­tics that T&T us­es.

“If peo­ple could pay a lot less and get clean wa­ter free to drink it would cut down the amount of plas­tics that we use and dis­card in this coun­try,” Trim ex­plained.

She ref­er­enced the 2012 an­i­mat­ed show Dr Seuss’ The Lo­rax, where the cast lived in a com­plete­ly ar­ti­fi­cial world where clean air was sold by the bot­tle as all the trees had been de­stroyed and there was no oxy­gen read­i­ly avail­able.

“The way peo­ple in this coun­try treat the en­vi­ron­ment, I don’t think they will treat their hous­es like this. Why would you treat the coun­try where you live in this man­ner?” she asked.

Solomon be­lieves Trinida­di­ans will on­ly wake up when our re­al­i­ty be­comes as crit­i­cal Dr Seuss’ The Lo­rax.

“On­ly when peo­ple have to wear masks in or­der to breathe and we start run­ning out of clean air will they un­der­stand the im­pact they are hav­ing on the en­vi­ron­ment,” she said.

The club al­so ful­ly sup­ports the move­ment call­ing for im­me­di­ate ac­tion to com­bat cli­mate change start­ed by Swedish school­girl Gre­ta Thun­berg. They par­tic­i­pat­ed in a lo­cal leg of the School strike for cli­mate re­cent­ly.

“Our main goal is the com­plete elim­i­na­tion of plas­tics in our school, our homes and our com­mu­ni­ties,” Ap­ple­white said.

The club’s next move is to in­stall so­lar pan­els and to re­place a grow box with a hy­dro­pon­ics sys­tem at the school.

If you want to fol­low the club’s ac­tiv­i­ties you can vis­it their pro­file on In­sta­gram @Beat Plas­tics Crew.