Schools asked to treat own wet waste, segregate garbage, segregate garbage

PANAJI: The directorate of education has asked schools across Goa to start treating wet waste generated by them within their premises. The new directives state that institutes must ‘strictly’ start segregating waste into wet and dry, and separate dry waste ‘to inculcate best practices to dispose waste among students’. The state government had said last year that it aims to make Goa garbage free by 2020.
DoE has also asked schools to separate wet waste like food waste, kitchen waste, leaves, etc, and treat it within the school premises by composting or generating biogas from it.

The dry waste, segregated into four categories — paper and cardboard, plastic, glass, and metal and non-recyclable — should be handed over to the local body like panchayats or the Goa waste management corporation, DoE has told schools right from primary to higher secondary. Along with government and government-aided schools, unaided and special schools too have been asked to implement these new orders.

Besides this, schools have been instructed to store e-waste separately.

“A nodal teacher as well as a waste management cell has to be appointed (with participation from students, parents, teaching, and non-teaching staff of the school) to ensure ownership and sustainability of waste managment in the institution,” director of education GP Bhat said.

Schools have also been provided a poster explaining the garbage problem in Goa. Institutes have been asked to use this poster to create awareness among students about proper disposal of waste. The poster asks students to be waste warriors and to pledge to segregate garbage to save Goa from the menace.