Students strive to make Ullal municipality a zero-waste zone

MANGALURU: Hundreds of students in Ullal Municipal Corporation each day take an oath to be cleanliness champions. During their morning assembly, these kids remind themselves through a pledge to not burn or throw plastic waste in their homes or around them. 

From past three months, students of Ullal Sayyed Madani High School, Halekote and Tippu Sulthan High School, Kotepura have been digging out plastic waste from their homes and sometimes on their way to school - milk packets, waste pens, fish nets, chocolate and wafer wrappers, and even the cover of their deworming tablets among others - to bring them to their schools and segregate them with the help of their teachers once a week. This is a first step towards a plastic-free municipality.

“This (collection and segregation) creates awareness among them about the harms of plastic, and tells them that plastic can also be sold, instead of being thrown or burnt,” said Malhar, the head master of Tippu Sulthan High School, which has put a halt on the collection at present because of school exams. In the forthcoming academic year, the school will start a zero wet-waste campaign in addition to the dry waste segregation.