Suntory PepsiCo Vietnam Beverage organises field trips for Hanoi’s elementary pupils

This useful outdoor activity is part of the water education programme “Mizuiku – I love clean water” funded by Suntory Holdings Limited (SHD) Japan and deployed by Suntory PepsiCo Vietnam Beverage (SPVB) in coordination with local authorities, schools and Live and Learn, a non-profit organisation that works to reduce poverty by creating sustainable futures.

During the factory tour, under the guidance of SPVB Bac Ninh staff, pupils learned about production process of popular non-alcoholic beverage, the importance of water in production process, observing wastewater treatment system and the change in quality of post-processed water as well as understanding the role of wastewater treatment before discharging into the environment.

The pupils also carried out diverse experiments to test colour, acidity and alkalinity of the wastewater.

The field trips made a good impression on engaged pupils. Nguyen Thuy Linh, pupil at Do Dong Elementary School, Thanh Oai district said, “It is the first time I have ever been to such a large non-alcoholic beverage plant. I am happy that what we observed was in reality instead of in our imagination or through pictures and photos as it used to. I and my friends will try to save and protect our water resources as we now understand how important water is to our life.”

Dang Thi Ngan, teacher at Hop Tien B Elementary School in My Duc district, highly appreciated the efficiency of this outdoor activity.

“This hand-on education model makes pupils more proactive while giving them a chance to apply what they have learnt at school in reality; hence, they remember well and understand intensively what they are taught. We hope that Suntory PepsiCo Vietnam Beverage will continue expanding this kind of outdoor activity so that teachers and pupils at our school can gain more useful experiences for our teaching and learning,” Ngan said.

Lam Binh Vu, plant manager, Suntory PepsiCo North Vietnam, said “As an enterprise heavily relying on water resources, we put a particular focus on investing and improving processes to save and reuse water during our production cycle. We do invest a consistent system in treating wastewater to emigrate our environmental footprints.”

“Apart from production, we frequently organise field trips for students to help them have first-hand experiences, lessening the gap between theory and practice. Field trips within Mizuiku project goes beyond these regular purposes since we are striving to create a change in pupils’ awareness in protecting natural water resources for the sake of young generations,” Vu added.

Launched in March 2015, Mizuiku finished its two phases including teaching about the role of the water on the planet, importance of water resources protection and water hygiene in people’s daily life; and training local teachers to deliver the lesson as well as handing over project documents to preserve project sustainability.

In the summer of 2015, Mizuiku project also engaged in a range of practical activities such as renovating school infrastructure and rest rooms, installing and putting into operation sets of water purification equipment, and bringing clean water to piloted schools.

After the water purification systems have been installed, the pupils have been guaranteed in using pure clean water that has been tested to meet drinking water standards set by the Department of Environmental Quality Analysis under Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology.

Mizuiku is a water education programme that has been successfully deployed in Japan since 2004 by Suntory Group. Vietnam is the first country other than Japan having this project developed.

In 2015, the project is piloted at six elementary schools in two Hanoi districts, My Duc and Thanh Oai, involving about 1,600 pupils.

Wholly foreign owned Suntory PepsiCo Vietnam Beverage is a strategic beverage alliance between Suntory, Japan’s multi-national major beverage company and US food and beverage giant PepsiCo.