青浦岑卜村捡拾活动

Editor’s note: On Saturday, September 24, 2022, Shanghai Hongrun Boyuan School teamed up with "Pick Up China", an environmental organization, to carry on the "World Clean Day" environmental activities themed "Pick up nature". Teachers and students work hard together to make the environment tidier and the air fresher in Cenbu Village.

The sunlight squeezed through the gaps between the leaves and cast itself on the bus seats, and a green melody was being played leisurely inside the bus. Everyone leaned sleepily on the chair, listening to the teacher introducing the pro bono activity to them. Gradually, they became more and more interested in it.

On arriving at the Cenpu village, we zigzaged through the narrow muddy paths, and we were completely woken up by the beautiful countryside. An interesting game provoked everyone's desire to win. We are amazed at the the time common objects in daily life take to degrade. It takes several minutes to manufacture a product in a workshop, but the same product will take decades or even hundreds of years to degrade. The teacher said that this village is surrounded by water in three directions, and the most widely planted crop is rice, but farmers never fertilize the crop. The students wondered about the reason why, and the teacher shook his head and explained: "It’s because of water eutrophication and rice just benefits from the nutrients in the water, so it grows very well." At this moment, we were impressed by the magic of nature.

Five students circled a patch of ground with an area of one square meter using a rope of 4 meters in length, and then they gathered and observed carefully "This grass is purple", "these are all ants!" "The tree is called neem..." The gap between man and nature was gradually bridged. One group of students spent 30 seconds tearing up a piece of newspaper and then another group put together the debris, which inevitably made everyone complain about the "atrocities" of the first group. The butterfly effect seemed to be verified---a small incident may produce a great effect on the future. Piecing a pile of paper scraps together would take a long time. Finally, our group chose to leave the mess as it was, The teacher said at this time, "Even if we piece together the scraps of paper, this newspaper can never become what it was, just like our nature, once destroyed, it can never become what it used to be....."

On arriving at "back yard of the Cengpu Village", we saw the grass clumped together here and there feebly, and the brown soil was exposed to the air, with piles of drink bottles, plastic bags, billboards, dumps of garbage scattered around, which stung my eyes. Divided into groups, we began our pickup. It was not long before we sorted out and piled up different types of garbage. It was very hot, and we were exhausted, but no one chose to loaf on the job.

At 2pm, our activity came to an end. We proudly looked at our “trophy”. The forest restored its original color, with breezes blowing and leaves dancing on the branches. We removed the garbage, and returned cleanness to this forest.