In order to preserve the environment & spread awareness about ?World Ozone Day 2016?, the Environment Protection & Development Authority [EPDA] of Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates organised a competition of designing a crazy Hat on the theme World Ozone Day on 15^th & 16^th Sep-16.

The participants were required to design their respective Hats is a way that it spreads the awareness about World Ozone Day 2016. All of you are aware that 16-Sep-16 is the official World Ozone Day, therefore this event was kept on this day. The participants were required to submit their hats one day prior to the event i.e. 15-Sep-16 for public display. There were two rounds of public voting on both days, followed by a Hat Parade with participants wearing their Hats and finally judging of the best Hat.

I firmly believe that we must spread awareness about our fragile environment & World Ozone Day was a perfect example to carry out the same. Therefore I took active participation in this event. I picked up a discarded but fit to use Hat lying in my recyclable / reusable bunch of items.

Now, I designed the decoration of the hat in a manner NOT to use any new item for the same. I targeted to use only recyclable / reusable items as it will go with the theme of the event. Therefore I selected Caps of Plastic Water bottles, used CDs & DVDs, buttons, Cloth etc.

It took me 2 days to decorate the hat & finally it was ready to be displayed for the competition. The Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah is 100 Kilometers away but the excellent road network of the UAE made it a drive of merely 40 minutes.

The competition was tough as participants were all highly creative and all the hats looked beautiful. Public voting was conducted & all the hats were judged by an eminent panel of judges. Judges asked each participant how they applied the theme of the event for the decoration of the hat. Subsequently all the participants were required to wear the hat & parade at the dais so that all the members of the jury & public can see how the preserving of the environment was taken care of for the decoration of the hat.

When the results were announced, I was adjudged as the winner by the jury.

Through the medium of this ambassador report I wish to highlight the fact that we must take appropriate steps as a part of our regular & daily lifestyle so the preservation & care of the fragile eco-system may be taken care of. It is not a rocket science but a simple follow up of Three R?s regularly. If all of us make individual efforts the landfills will diminish and recycling & reusing will thrive. We must reduce the use of ozone destroying stuff such as CFC. Usage of plastic must be reduced.

UAE is making great efforts for preservation of environment & it is our duty to help them in order to ensure a greener future for all of us.

Thanks for reading