A separate bin for the waste paper, cardboard, plastics, metal and glass your family generates daily - it is not rocket science and it considerably helps to reduce the problem of waste disposal in the city. A step like this helps isolate what amounts to 700 grams of the 2.6 kg of garbage generated by a four-member family.
And if every single home insists on recycling, nearly 1,000 tonnes of the 4,000 tonnes of garbage that the city generates daily will be fruitfully utilised, said Joga Rao, Divisional Head, Commercial, ITC’s Paperboards and Specialty Division. He was addressing a large group of school principals and teachers on Saturday to seek their support in taking the company’s Wealth Out of Waste (WOW) initiative to more schools.
Students of around 40 schools in the city already participate in the programme to segregate garbage at homes and bring the recyclables to schools that the company collects for use in its paper mills. The WOW initiative in Chennai is two years old and on July 1, the company will celebrate Recyclable Day in which over 15,000 students are expected to participate. It now plans to expand the project to around 200 schools. Children are repaid in cash or with stationary from ITC for their efforts.
C.V. Shankar, Principal Secretary to Department of Environment, said that it was necessary to keep garbage generated in the city in the respective wards only. “There are 200 wards and no space to dump. It is necessary for every resident to reduce, recycle and reuse,” he said. Mr. Shankar said that the necessity to clean roads and other public spaces on a daily basis arose because the public keeps littering.
Chand Das, chief executive, ITC’s Education and Stationery Products Business, said that the company had involved local residents and greened 1.25 lakh hectares of land. The Company was presented the 2012 World Business and Development Award for its transformational rural initiatives in social and farm forestry programmes at the Rio+20 United Nations Summit at Rio de Janeiro, he said.
