As a club, the Rotary Club of Johannesburg New Dawn was born out of a simple challenge: to create a more progressive and more vibrant type of Rotary club while still striving to put Service Above Self.
Do we succeed in this? We constantly challenge ourselves to do more, to do better and to strive for solutions to problems that face our communities, our country and our planet..
There can be few more urgent problems needing solutions than finding ways of drastically decreasing the use of plastics which now threaten to throttle the world. It was therefore fitting that Babette Gallard threw down a number of challenges in this regard at the meeting this week.
Start off at home, she said. The Rotary Action Group EndPlasticSoup has created an app for your smartphone called MLPF, or My Little Plastic Footprint.
Babette broke the challenge down into progressive steps. The first is obvious; download the App, register and start filling in the answers. Step two is to send your resultant Plastic Mass Index (PMI) to Babette (babettegallard@gmail.com) by no later than Tuesday, 1 February. The challenge is of course to get every member in the club to do this, so that Babette has meaningful data with which to track our progress.
That's just the start of the challenges. The next for individual members is to reduce your use of plastics throughout the home and work place as much as possible.
Plastics will never be fully eradicated, she said, because it has so many uses, but reducing your personal use of it will help to reduce your carbon footprint.
Babette then wants to measure our progress every month for at least six months and publish the figures on the website. If the progress has been satisfactory, New Dawn can brag about it to other Rotary clubs and challenge them to do the same.
She pointed out that 10 to 13% of carbon emissions worldwide are due to the burning of plastics, more than the shipping and airline industries combined.
It was to counter this and to make a difference that Gert-Jan van Dommelen of the Rotary Club of Huizen-Gooimeer, about 30 km East of Amsterdam, quit his day job as an IBM executive in the Netherlands and created EndPlasticSoup and the plastic footprint app.
Gert-Jan, who joined the New Dawn meeting via Zoom, laid down another challenge: that New Dawn should join the campaign. Although 205 Rotary clubs worldwide have become ambassador clubs for the cause, there is only one in South Africa, in East London.
He emphasised that it is not just plastics that are harmful, but also the micro-plastics and additives found in them.
Babette also challenged the club to celebrate three important environmental days this year; Earth Day on 22 April, EndPalsticSoup Action Day on 4 June and World Cleanup Day on 17 September and to hold well publicised public events on these days.
She also suggested that club members start delivering recycled plastic to the new plastics recycling centre at Zoo Lake, which will be recycled into furniture.
Further challenges are to create and sustain an awareness campaign and to start an education programme in schools and colleges, which fits in nicely with the New Dawn theme of helping young people.
During Judy Sligcher's year as president the club bestowed honorary membership on passionate priest and Rotarian Nick Bell and at the meeting this week Judy handed over his certificate. Nick and his wife are back in Johannesburg for the summer visiting their daughter and grandchildren for the first time since the summer of 2019.
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