A teacher at an agricultural college has found a good alternative to using lined paper by giving students banana leaves to write on instead.

They were used for a test on environmentally friendly packaging at one of the classes at West Visayas State University School of Agriculture in Iloilo City on Panay Island in the Philippines on 9th November.

Teacher Niel Amaca told local media: “The subject we were discussing was packaging and how banana leaves used to be used previously for packaging.

“The students were taught how previously banana leaves were much more widely used, for example to wrap fish and other products, and at the end the students were asked to bring banana leaves with them for their exam.”

The teacher added: “At first they were a bit incredulous about the use of banana leaves to write their papers and I was pretty worried that not all of them would bring a banana leaf but in the end they did and it all went well.”

So far the banana leaves, which need to be warmed by a fire to dry them before they could be used for the exam, have been used twice in the course entitled “Post-Harvest Handling and Seed Technology”.

The class has 50 senior-year students.

All of the leaves were taken from the school’s own banana plantation and the teacher added their removal has no negative effect on the tree.

At the end of the exam, the students who are graduating soon were allowed to keep their banana leaf answer paper as a reminder of their class and their teacher.