NGO, Thane school kickstart zero-waste management campaign

THANE: In an attempt to make every city school a zero-waste institution and start instilling the habit of cleanliness and road safely in the minds of the Gen X, city-based environmental

NGO

R-Nisarg and Smt. Sulochanadevi Singhania School kick started the first-of-its-kind ‘

Prarambh

movement’ on Saturday morning.

Over the years, the issue of solid waste segregation and disposal seems to have become a topic of discussion across the lake city as the 750-metric tonnes of waste generated from societies, schools and public areas per day has no way of being scientifically disposed of.

Three schools— St. Xavier’s High School, Singhania High School and Lodha World School— have been following the waste management drive religiously since the last four years with the help of R-Nisarg.

The move to turn the small initiative into a pan-city campaign, provide a platform for all school authorities to come together and chalk out plans and join the movement resulted in the conceptualization of Prarambh.

Founder of the NGO Dr. Lata Ghanshamnani said, “Making a waste management plan for each of the three schools over the past four years has been a time consuming and exhaustive process, and we realized that if we needed it to reach out to all schools in the city then we would need a digital platform. I then reached out to Dr. Revathi Srinivasan who helped us create and launch this movement.”

While the main focus of this movement is to help city schools reduce, reuse, recycle, segregate and manage their waste through the ‘follow the monkey’ part of the campaign, it will also include the Smiles or Safety for miles campaign which basically requires a registered school to adopt a kilometer of the road in their vicinity and ensure the road safety rules are followed there. “Every action we undertake falls in four categories—knowingly right: wherein we know that our action is the correct thing to do and consciously do it; knowingly wrong: wherein we know something is illegal or harmful but still go ahead with it; unknowingly wrong: wherein we don’t realize when we are doing something wrong and unknowingly right: wherein we do the correct step without realizing it. This #unknowinglyright act takes place only because of the habits instilled in us in our environment and we aim to make each child take an unknowingly right decision when it comes to road safety and solid waste management,” said Dr. Srinivasan, addressing the crowd of academicians at an event on Saturday.

As part of this movement, each registered school will be guided through the process of converting their school into a zero waste school through the digital platform and workshops. “The first Prarambh level has tasks like organizing awareness workshops, waste segregation and monitoring whether commuters are wearing seatbelts and helmets or jaywalking. The second will include schools that have established infrastructure to manage their waste; and the third level will include those who have established an exhaustive waste management segregation and road safety drive and invite us for audits,” Dr. Ghanshamnani said.Speaking about the initiative, Padmashree Dr. Anil Kakodkar, said, “If we inculcate these habits in children at a primary level then they are bound to change the city for the better. This will help them shape their personalities in a way that readies them to be torchbearers of our society.”