Each student is a potential foot-soldier for safeguarding the environment — that is the premise on which SAVE (Students Army for Vadakara Environment) is built on. SAVE is an environment conservation and education programme, with focus on students, undertaken by the District Education Office (DEO), Vadakara, in collaboration with Green Community, a collective for environment conservation initiatives.
SAVE is aimed at creatively sensitising students to issues related to the protection of environment, says its coordinator Vadayakkandy Narayanan. “It aims at covering all the 630 schools in the Vadakara educational district in Kozhikode,” he says.
Launched by poet and activist Sugathakumari in February last year, the movement had charted out a 20-point agenda, touching upon issues related to protection of nature.
An afforestation drive named ‘One school, One Kavu (sacred grove),’ a zero-budget plastic waste management system, study tour to nearby places — Haritha Theerthadanam — to learn more about the environmental aspects of the area, and collecting and preserving Nattarivu (folk wisdom) are some of them. “Workshops and training programmes have been conducted in schools in the educational district to orient teachers and students towards the project,” said Mr. Narayanan.
The programmes are intended to be implemented in the schools of all the seven educational sub-districts including Nadapuram, Chombala, Koyilandy and Kunnummal in the Vadakara educational district. A major step was a successful first-phase execution of the zero-budget plastic waste management system in over 90 schools in Kunnummal.
“Unaided and CBSE schools in the region too have been brought to the project’s fold,” said Mr. Narayanan.
On July 8, over a tonne plastic waste was collected from the 90-odd schools in Kunnummal educational sub-district and handed over to a recycling unit in Kasaragod.
“Plastic waste will be collected from schools in the rest of the educational sub-districts in the coming months,” said T. Shobeendran, Chief Coordinator of Green Community.
Under the system, students will collect plastic carry bags used at home, clean, and keep them in a bag to be brought to the school periodically on a given day.
Students may also bring plastic toys and other plastic throwaways to the school to be handed over to the collectors. The plastic waste is normally priced between Rs.4 to Rs.20 a kg, depending on its classification.
“This money is used for paying the transportation charge, making the process a no-expense affair,” says Prof. Shobeendran. “But this is only one of the 20 initiatives of SAVE,” he adds.
