Children recycle 50 tonnes of plastic waste | Fusion - WeRIndia

A lot of plastic that is used in day to day activities ends up in seas.

This results in many dangers for environment and aquatic life.

However, a Pune-based initiative, Sagar Mitra Abhiyan did a huge part in saving 50 tonnes of plastic from reaching the sea. And they did it all with the help of children.

It all started with a straightforward riverbank cleanliness drive by the NGO The Academic Advisors (TAA) with schoolchildren.

It was by the founders of TAA, Vinod Bodhankar, Susan Raj and Lalit Rathi.

They saw the huge amounts of syringe needles, pieces of glass and other such sharp objects.

They didn’t want the children to be exposed to such dangerous materials.

Hence they thought of an innovative way for children to safely collect, recycle and dispose plastic.

 

TAA then started Sagar-Mitra Abhiyaan initiative in 2011 with 150 children from a school. Under this program, children of classes 5 to 9 are given awareness about dangers of plastic pollution.

They show presentations of marine life and birds choked to death on plastic.

The children are shown that human activities are responsible for this. Then they give the students a plastic bag to collect clean, dry, empty plastic from their homes.

They should collect at least one item a day. They are all put into a big plastic bag.

The students handover their collection to teachers and volunteers at school every month. Students who could not collect have no penalty.

The plastic is collected by a Sagar-Mitra vehicle.

The waste is weighed and packed into the vehicle. The school is given ₹8 per kg as green fund. The collected plastic is delivered to warehouses of the Clean Garbage Manufacturing Pvt. Ltd. (CGMPL).

Here it is recycled into diesel or hard boards like table tops and pots. In such way, the children have collected about 50 tonnes of plastic to date.

Image Reference: Thebetterindia