First Balfour’s Zero Heroes ‘stuffed it’ to build a toilet for Tanauan schoolchildrenIN 2016, First Balfour introduced an environmental campaign called Zero Hero.

The concept involves achieving a zero-waste lifestyle with an overarching principle that by throwing less and using less, one is actually doing more for the environment.

Aside from creating awareness about the impact of climate change, the campaign had modest goals of engaging employees and their families, friends and relatives to participate in daily habits to reduce their carbon footprint.

The Zero Hero activitiesinclude the #StuffItChallenge where employees were asked to collect and clean empty plastic bottles and stuff them with nonbiodegradable materials. These can then be used as ecobricks, which are alternative fillers or bricks in the construction of walls, fences and other simple structures. 

The #StuffItChallenge became the inspiration behind Project Handog, First Balfour’s sustainability competition. The winning Project Handog entry called WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene) enabled a public school in Tanauan, Batangas to have a new toilet and handwash facilities built using ecobricks. 

“Using ecobricks to build a simple but sturdy structure brings many inspiring messages and transforms waste into something useful. It not only provides a facility for hygiene, it will also educate the students about doing something now to protect the environment and ensure a viable planet in the future,” says First Balfour HR head and Project Handog committee chairman Carlos Pedro Salonga.

For First Balfour, this is the Zero Hero way of giving back with a difference. (Dolly PasiaRamos)

A worker prepares a wall of ecobricks fort