British Council Sri Lanka embraces World Environment Day in Colombo and Kandy

British Council Sri Lanka recently obtained recognition from its headquarters in London, as the first large office in the British Council network world-wide to reach Level 3 on the Environmental Framework Tool.

This level was awarded to the Sri Lanka office for their monitoring of environmental behaviour, increased awareness among staff of measurement strategies, and calculation of the office carbon footprint for a baseline year against which the office could measure and reduce future carbon emissions.

Embracing their global recognition, the British Council offices in Colombo and Kandy celebrated World Environment Day 2011 in full fledge.

A series of events were organised at the Colombo premises on 4 June 2011, where the chief guest for the ceremony was Dr. Ajantha Perera, Founder of the National Programme on Recycling of Solid Waste and Advisor to the Ministry of Environment. Dr. Perera conducted a tree-planting demonstration for children, where the British Council Sri Lanka Country Director Tony Reilly was invited to plant a tree at the Colombo premises.

Dr. Perera, being a very inspiring personality, was very good at engaging the audience that mainly comprised of children. She explained, very simply and interestingly, how trees breathe and how they are helpful to mankind.

After the tree-planting, Dr. Perera conducted a demonstration on how to make organic compost, followed by a lecture about the importance of taking care of the environment by living in a sustainable way. The lecture was followed by an art competition that 70 students of the British Council Teaching Centre participated in.

A series of environmental films were also screened at the British Council Colombo premises free-of-charge to the public. The BBC and Wildscreen films that were screened were inspirational and educational, and covered issues such as global warming, deforestation, overhunting and fishing, and coral regeneration. Free ‘kola kanda’ was also distributed to all British Council Colombo visitors on that particular day, courtesy of Mount Lavinia Hotel. The office in Kandy celebrated World Environment Day on Friday, 3 June 2011, through a range of activities, including film screenings, photography-related seminars and an organic home gardening workshop.

Teaming up with Wildscreen, the celebrations in Kandy helped spread awareness of the importance of conservation and preservation of the planet for future generations.

Three guest speakers spoke at the event; firstly, Dr. Bhathiya Sumithraarachchi, who spoke on the conservation of nature and his knowledge and experience as the former Director of the Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya, secondly, Dr. Ranjith Pallegama, who shared his expertise on  the basics of nature photography, and thirdly, Mr. Palitha Handunge, who screened his award winning feature film ‘Sinharaja village – life in transition’, while providing an overview of how to produce effective films and videos.

The interactive workshop on organic gardening was conducted by Dr. Jayantha Attapattu from the Department of Agriculture. In his workshop, Dr. Attapattu provided tips on how to produce an organic garden and how to best use a small space to achieve optimum results.

All participants received plants and seeds, along with leaflets providing sound grounding on how to create their own small home gardens.

Sponsoring British Council’s World Environment Day, Nestlé  provided free Milo packets to all participants in Kandy.

While British Council Kandy chose to celebrate WED on Friday 3 June, and the Colombo office chose to celebrate the day on Saturday 4 June, World Environment Day was internationally celebrated on 5 June 2011 this year.