Ntendeni Luvhengo, a first year Rhodes University Journalism student from Venda in the Limpopo region, has been selected as a Bayer Young Environmental Envoy (BYEE).The BYEE is a global environmental education initiative for the youth, organised and promoted by Bayer and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The initiative requires youths between 18 and 24 years old, and actively involved in environmental activities, to submit an essay detailing how their particular project is addressing environmental challenges in their community or city, focusing on one of the following five areas: Sustainable Agriculture, Water Conservation, Litter and Waste Management, Energy Efficiency and Climate Change.

Ntendeni's essay centred on a project called Ukuzalwa Okutsha, which she set up to address litter and waste management challenges in Extension 9 in Grahamstown. Any profits from the scheme go to benefit the Jabez Health Care Centre, which supports underprivileged women and children affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty.

Ntendeni heard about the BYEE competition via a student mailing list at the end of her first semester at Rhodes. She was a member of Global Pact, an international educational organization that runs training programmes for people who want to learn the skills they need to change their communities, and she was therefore already thinking of ways to address environmental issues.

She chose to focus on a project to collect and recycle bottles and cans in Grahamstown Ext. 9. The empties are collected from bottle stores and are taken to Makana Recycling.

Ukuzalwa Ukotsha has been running since July 2009, although transport issues have meant that Ntendeni has not been able to recycle as often as she would have liked. The project is now using the car belonging to the Jabez Centre, rather than a hire car, to collect and transport the cans and bottles. Therefore all the monies made from the recycling can go to Jabez. Ntendeni is hoping to recycle every two weeks now that the transport issue is resolved.

Ntendeni is currently working on the project alone, but is aiming to get other students involved. She would also like to expand the project to Venda, where it would operate on a larger scale, due, she says, to there being considerably more bottle stores and therefore more waste and litter to be dealt with.

As part of her prize, Ntendeni will be leaving for Germany in November. The week-long field trip, involving winners from 15 other countries, will include guided tours to environment related facilities, lectures and discussions with Bayer environmental specialists, a visit to a municipal waste segregation system and a trip on a laboratory ship to check the water quality of the Rhine. This will be her first trip overseas, and she is, she says, "so excited!"

Ntendeni is enjoying her Journalism studies very much, and hopes to study New Media at Honours level. Her goal is to work in environmental and community journalism in a large city such as Cape Town, and, she confesses, her greatest dream is to one day work for UNEP.

Story by Jeannie McKeown