a) The aim of the ‘No Plastic Straw Campus’ project are to implement the award of ‘Eco-Campus’ of UMS to become the first ‘No Plastic Straw Campus’ university in Malaysia, and also to increase the UMS students’ awareness on the effect of plastic straws to marine environment. Students can also give the sense of protection to the environment by using alternative straws instead of using the plastic straws in UMS.

b) Before we start this project, we had to do fund raising from community such as from family, friends and also public to make this project going success. Total RM127 we collected.

c)  During this project, we faced a lot of obstacles but fortunately, we were able to solve it.

     i)  The main problem was the budget to run all of the programs in this whole project. There were totally 6 programs in this project, but because of some unpredictable process and cause the money release very slow.

     ii)  Since it was a lot of large programs were held during this semester, the venue to hold the program became a problem. Fortunately, we found another place to hold our program and everyone satisfied it, but still had some problems appeared. For example, during the program of Upcycling Workshop, we chose library foyer as the venue but because of it is outdoor, participants cannot see the screen of projector clearly.

iii) Problems of communication. During our weekly meeting, just a few members attended and this became an issue about the communication among our group members.

Besides of the problems we faced during the project, we still have a lot of parts which did well through the whole project. Cooperation and unite are the important elements to make a program successful. All of our units members were willing to sacrifice their times to help us to set up everything needed before and during the program.

From this project, we succeed to raise awareness among around 1000 UMS students on the issue of the plastic straws towards the environment through the pledge of No Plastic Straw Campus. Furthermore, we sold around 100 more alternative straws to students. From the program of Strawless Run which involved outsiders, we also spread this news to them successfully.

We believe that this project will have a long-term impact that students UMS will start to use alternative straws instead of plastic straws and some of them even stop using plastic straws in daily life. We will still keep going to raise students’ awareness on decrease the usage of plastic straws. As part of FEE, FEE will continue to run any programs related to the environment and the important is to make UMS to become the first No Plastic Straw Campus in Malaysia.

Project of ‘No Plastic Straw Campus’ gives a long-term of sustainability to community especially to the environment. By decreasing the usage of plastic straw as well as others single use plastic, our environment will become more greenish, and also UMS students can be educated about the harmful of plastic towards the Earth. It not just bring happiness to our marine life, students also happy when see our planet be saved.

Throughout this project, I can speak out my mind honestly that it is really increased my awareness about the plastic pollution. My friends and I are stop to use plastic straws and also decrease the usage of plastic bags, plastic containers even the plastic bottles. We start to bring our own alternative straws and reusable containers when going out. This make me feel happy that not just only me care about our environments in this world, but also if want to change our environments, is not enough just depends on ourselves effort. Last but not least, straw is an alternative but not a necessity (Wong Chew Yee, Director of Project No Plastic Straw Campus, 2018).