Eco-friendly mobile pouches here to stay

Kochi: While elections are often associated with paper trails and plastic waste, Ernakulam district turned the tide with a novel Green Mobile Keeping initiative. On election day on Thursday, polling booths across district have been equipped with upcycled cotton mobile pouches.While the dust settles on 2026 elections, cotton mobile pouches aren't headed for the trash. They are set to decorate village offices, besides schools, colleges and other educational institutions that served as polling stations."What makes the experience truly novel is the afterlife of these pouches. Unlike traditional election materials that end up in landfills, these handcrafted repositories are designed for longevity. Once votes are counted and booths cleared, these pouches will be gifted to village offices and educational institutions that served as polling stations," said District Suchitwa Mission assistant coordinator (IEC) Liji K J.To facilitate this, booth level officers (BLOs) are directed to return the pouches at the collection centre functioning in Ernakulam Govt Girls High School. A total of 3,200 handcrafted pouches were churned out for the district's 3,148 polling booths.The initiative, launched under the tagline ‘Wardrobe-il idle, Polling booth-il viral' (idle in the wardrobe, viral at the polling booth), was spearheaded by district collector G Priyanka. The project addressed Election Commission's mandate to provide mobile deposit facilities outside booths. Rather than purchasing new plastic or synthetic holders, district administration collected thousands of pure cotton garments — kurtas, dresses and bedsheets — donated by public.These fabrics were handed over to Kudumbashree tailoring units, who transformed them into hangable repositories. "It was a novel experience for me. The handcrafted pouches are nicely designed and comfortably hold mobile phones," said Vinod Kumar K S, who cast his vote at Bhavan's Vidya Mandir Elamakkara.Meanwhile, many BLOs complained that they were not given accessories to hang the pouches in the walls of booths. "We placed the pouches on a table and kept mobiles phones on it," said a BLO at the polling booth station in Kufos, Madavana.