KOZHIKODE: Mission Ball Pen, an initiative that urges the public not to throw away used ball pens, was launched in the Vadakara educational district with the support of Student Army for Vivid Entertainment (SAVE) recently.
Mission Ball Pen is the brainchild of two college students, Harishankar S. Nair and Shabab Karunyam of Lissah College, Kaithappoyil, and Government Arts and Science College, Meenchanda, respectively.
The movement started off as an afterthought of ‘Pen Drive to Biennale’, which was undertaken by Green Care Mission in the city a year ago. Harishankar and Shabab had then served as its volunteers. Students continued to collect ball pens even after the Pen Drive but did not know what to do with them. This prompted Harishankar and Shabab to start Mission Ball Pen, which is not just about collecting pens but also creating awareness in schools and colleges on the three R’s - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
Mission Ball Pen volunteers visit campuses and receive ball pens collected by students and hand them over to Green Worms, a Kozhikode-based waste management venture, to recycle them. The news of the movement spread by word of mouth and social media fast and in no time the duo started getting calls from campuses in other districts too in support of the campaign.
SAVE is known for several environment-friendly campaigns such as ‘Back to ink pens’. However, complaints from students that the paper they used was not ‘ink pen-friendly’ made SAVE rethink and focus on checking the tendency to throw away pens in some other way. SAVE plans to implement Mission Ball Pen on around 1,400 campuses in Kozhikode district. Deputy Director of Education E.K. Suresh Kumar officially launched the programme on October 9.