By Jonathan Ugbal
An 11-year-old Lehwehtu James Ibor has emerged third in a worldwide painting competition organized for relatives of staff of Halliburton.
Miss. Ibor, a student of Lourdes Academy is said to have spent just a night and submitted her painting on the last day. She utilized crayons on cardboard paper with the painting seeking to draw attention to the need for more environmentally friendly practices.
After obtaining consent from her parents to speak with her, Lehwehtu told CrossRiverWatch that her painting was to raise awareness of the need for recycling and its impact on the environment.
“This painting I drew here is to create awareness for recycling and to show the importance of recycling and to show the importance of recycling and how it can affect our environment.
“I drew here on the right side an environment where there is no plastic, the sun is smiling and the trees are green and on the left side, I drew an environment with plastic and polluted water and the frowning sun,” she said.
Explaining the choice of the frowning sun, she averred that it shows, “if we keep our environment clean everybody would be happy including the sun and if we do not keep our environment clean everybody in the environment including the sun will not be happy.”
The painting also featured two palm trees; one with leaves and the other without. According to her, the one without leaves was to show that plastics in the soil will definitely kill trees and explained the reason behind the colors she used in her painting.
“Palm trees are green, the green colors of the palm trees represent life and the colors of the flowers also represent the life and here the brown trees with no green leaves represent that they are not growing because of the plastic and this represents them,” she said and sued for other uses for single-use plastics instead of the current practice of just throwing them away.
“My message is that they should find other ways to recycle like using plastic to make other things like (poly) pots to plant more trees in the environment. You must not recycle to change the way plastic affects our environment but find other uses for plastic, like using plastic to grow garden plants or crops, using plastic for house assignments, or using plastic for anything you can find that plastic can be used for,” she said.