Members of the Green Love club gather for a group photo near the Ulan Mulun River in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. [Provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Dong Yonghong, a marathon runner, is a secondary school geography teacher in Ordos, Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Many years ago, when he was running a marathon along the Ulan Mulun River, the local "mother river", he noticed that people were discarding rubbish along the riverbank. That's when he got the idea to have his students participated in the protection of the river.

"The Ulan Mulun River is a first-class tributary of the Yellow River, and the entire length of the Kangbashi section is more than 40 kilometers, which is pretty much the distance of a full marathon," Dong said. He picked up the trash whenever he noticed it and reported the damaged to the riverbank online or to environmental protection departments. Over time, patrolling the river became part of his life.

Dong Yonghong explains the landscape of the river to student volunteers in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. [Provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Dong knows it's important to get more people for river protection. So he launched the Green School with Love and Care project in 2011, which took the Ulan Mulun River as the target and has carried out more than 20 activities to protect it. To enrich the project, Dong has done nine field studies in Ordos covering thousands of kilometers.

Over the past 10 years since the project was established, the number of participants has exceeded 5,000. As many as 1.5 million plastic bottles, 300 tons of waste paper and 20,000 used batteries have been disposed of properly or recycled. In addition, those recycled items have also endowed a charity fund. In 2020 in the context of the pandemic, the project has donated medical supplies worth more than 60,000 yuan to Hubei province.

Dong Yonghong explains the ecological situation of the Ulan Mulun River to student volunteers in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. [Provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Dong takes his students to the river every weekend for rubbish pickup as well as teaching on-site geography classes.

"In addition to organizing activities such as rubbish collecting and voluntary lecturing, I also teach geography in conjunction with the on-site landform. It's an outdoor geography classroom," Dong said.

Student volunteers clean up trash along the Ulan Mulun River in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. [Provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

The club has so far recruited more than 300 on-campus volunteers and 1,700 off-campus ones.

"Dong's project has become quite influential in the area, and he deserves the name river chief, said Zhang Yong, director of the district agriculture, animal husbandry and water resources bureau.

"I hope that through my efforts, the students will come to know their hometown better and love it more — and that they will build up their awareness of saving resources and protecting the environment," Dong said.