On 6th January 2023, Namita Bhura & Aditi Chopra, responsible residents of GPM planned a waste collection exchange drive in Pancheel Swami Nagar Model School. We had initiated a program with the school in making it a zero waste model, where young boys and girls are torch bearers of Iow waste generation.
Emphasizing on the basic principle that (One’s trash can be one’s treasure) we undertook 4 to5 sessions in the school where we encouraged the school students to start segregating waste at source i.e. “their homes and spreading and involving their neighborhood community for the same. With the help of an NGO ITC WOW, Wellness out of waste, our waste collection partner, we set up a booth in the school where students could bring all their waste collected at home, be it plastic wrappers of chocolates, chips, bread, cheese, milk pouches etc. Wrappers of Atta, Daal and the grocery items, packaging material of any sort, plastic sheets, containers etc. In exchange of waste collected they can take school stationery stuff like different kinds of gel pens, ballpoint pens, geometry boxes, school copies, registers, pencils, sharpners, erasers which can be utilized in their everyday routine.
Kids participated with full enthusiasm and collected nearly 400 kgs of waste in totality. It was overwhelming to see how each child participated with so much excitement, zeal and enthusiasm. We thank the school principal Aarti Prashad for helping us and for allowing us to work as a team with the Children. We aspire to conduct more such initiatives in different schools and setting up a composting pit is already in the pipeline to achieve our target of Zero waste.
by Aditi Chopra (E 9, 9810497429)
