In her letter, Nguyen Nguyet Linh, 11, from Marie Curie Secondary School said that “I know that on every opening ceremony of new academic year, many schools often fly balloons. After falling to the ground or the sea, birds, sea turtles or other animals can mistake balloons for foods so they can eat them.”

 

  Nguyen Nguyet Linh

 

 

“I hope that our schools can stop releasing balloons on the occasion of new school year ceremony or limit this,” the girl proposed.

What Linh wrote extremely surprised the headmaster of Marie Curie Secondary School, Nguyen Xuan Khang, who then replied to her letter quickly.

According to the headmaster, he was really surprised and felt moved at Linh’s email.

He admitted that not only his school but also many others consider the balloon release as a common way to brighten up the new school year’s opening ceremony. But almost no one thinks of environmental consequences.

People always call for not to use plastic bags to protect the environment but seem to forget balloons.

“I am sure that all the teachers of our school will strongly advocate your suggestion. There will no balloons to be flown in the air at our school’s upcoming opening ceremony,” Khang noted.

He also highlighted that the opening ceremony of the academic year 2019-2020 will be named after Nguyet Linh to honour her wonderful initiative.

“I’m proud of you,” the headmaster expressed.

Nguyet Linh’s mother who is a university lecture said that initially, her daughter intended to write letters by hand to send directly to schools. But this takes time, so she tried to find email addresses of more than 40 schools in Hanoi to send her letter.

Among those, many addresses are inaccurate, so the letter has been sent to roughly 30 schools, including three giving her feedback.

In addition to Marie Curie, Viet Uc and Pascal schools pledged that they will not fly balloons.

The mother said that since Nguyet Linh was small, she was taken to participate in many outside activities, which has partially nurtured her awareness of environmental protection.

She ever wrote scripts and made clips to call for the community to reduce the single-use plastic product use. Dtinews

My Ha