Highlights Of Banega Swachh India Season 4 With Amitabh Bachchan

Mr Bachchan leaves you with this message, "Join the #Mere10Guz initiative."

To participate, adopt the 3 steps of #Mere10Guz - Clean-up. Segregate. Compost. Upload images/videos of your effort here and get featured on NDTV on Rashtriya Swachhta Diwas on October 2

Here's the impact of the waste segregation and composting efforts that Garden Estate, Gurugram has seen:
- 55% of Total Waste 225 kilos per day (Kitchen Waste) is composted
- Waste dispatched to landfill reduced by 82,125 kgs per annum
- 25% of the waste generated is being recycled as the segregation has improved
- Only 20% of the rejected waste is going to Landfill
- The housing complex also has a sewage treatment plant of 75,000 litres, so freshwater consumption for gardening cut by that much amount.

This is what it took Garden Estate to put waste segregation and composting unit in place:
- Cost Of Composting unit : Rs 50,000
- Cost of Bins/bags supplied to residents: Rs 80,000
- Cost of Composting shed: Rs 1,35,000
- Labour and consumables: Rs 7,000 per month
- First compost of 600 kgs was ready by end of April 2016.
- Compost produced and utilised till December 2016 - 7000 kgs

Garden Estate, a residential complex in Gurugram comprising of 373 flats  and houses built on 22 acres took up waste segregation and composting since February, 2016. For segregation, they adopted the 2 bin - 1 bag method which now also mandated by Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. For composting, their system is completely natural but requires some  space and lots of dry Leaves. It is very cost effective. Since no big electric machines used hence low Carbon footprint.

Let's make segregation and waste management like brushing our teeth. You have to do it yourself.
The more you segregate the more value you make it out of it: Swati Sambyal, Programme Manager, Environmental Governance (Municipal Solid Waste), Centre for Science and Environment

Learnings from Sri Sri School, Kolkata:
- Children are aware of the importance of segregating waste-food waste, dry waste as paper, plastic, glass, foils and e-waste.

- All paper waste, however small, gets recycled and fruit and vegetable peel waste goes into the compost pit in the school ground.

- Plastic bottles and cardboard boxes are often used in the Art & Craft classes and turned into beautiful objects.

- Waste water from Air conditioners are collected and used for cleaning purposes. Each year we plant many trees around the school.

If we do not do anything about waste management, then we will need landfills that will be the size of  Mumbai, Hyderabad and Greater Noida combined by 2047: Swati Sambyal, Programme Manager, Environmental Governance (Municipal Solid Waste), Centre for Science and Environment

 

In the next 10-15 years, the ability of people to litter is just going to become higher: Nitish Kapoor, Regional Director, RB South Asia

Obviously waste management is a huge problem. We need to inculcate a kind of thinking and training at a very young age. As a part of the school curriculum we need to have a class where this is taught: Amitabh Bachchan

Things to learn from Kendriya Vidyalaya's initiative:

- Practices waste segregation at source - 19 points with 2 bins
- 87 % of the paper and plastic waste is recycled and reused
- Compost generated used for school garden
- Each class room as well as all areas (Office, staff rooms, laboratories, libraries etc.) have two dustbins - One wet and one for dry waste.
- One empty paper cartoon is provided to each class for collection of paper waste which in turn is collected at the end of the day in an identified area in the staff room. These papers are collected by the authorized dealer for recycling and reuse.
- Areas in the campus are identified for students to sit and eat their lunch during breaks so that waste is kept in one place.
- E-waste is auctioned and also sent to authorized dealers for recycling.
- Newspapers and examination waste are also sent to the authorized dealer for further recycling.
- Compost pits are available in the vidyalaya campus for biodegradable and horticulture waste which are later used as manure for the vidyalaya garden.
- Napkin Incinerator and Napkin Winning machine are installed in the vidyalaya for decomposing sanitary waste.
- Rainwater harvesting is also done in the vidyalaya and the water is further used in the garden. 

Students of Kendriya Vidyalaya Rail Wheel Factory, Yelahanka, Bengaluru talk about their Swachh initiative.

What we can learn from the Shri Ram School's example:
- The school is a no-plastic zone, discourages the use of any plastics and promotes recycling and reusing paper.

- Last year, the students constructed a bench solely out of waste plastic bottles filled with sand and joined together by cement. This was an undertaking to promote reuse and recycle of plastic bottles and to reiterate the gravity of the 'No-Plastic Zone.

Students of the Shri Ram School set an example for others to follow:
- Posters line the bathrooms to encourage students to reduce water wastage and usage. This dirty water from bathrooms leaves the main building and goes to the Sewage Treatment Plant where it gets sanitised, disinfected and is used for watering the field and plants.

- The school has a gargantuan underwater Rain Water Harvesting System with 8 percolation pits in different areas. This water is again used for watering and cleaning purposes.

- The chemicals that are drained from the chemistry labs undergo an elaborate titration system where the residual mixture is treated with Sodium Hydroxide solution and diluted Hydrochloric Acid. This ensures that the chemical waste water that reaches the Sewage Treatment Plant is of a neutral pH.

The Shri Ram School's Swachh Agenda:
·         To make things more interesting and to provide an incentive to students so as to ensure that they segregate the waste properly, the students of the Environment Society made the dry waste bins into basketball baskets.
·         The waste paper collected in the entire school goes for recycling
·         The school also has something called the Tetra Pack Bin where students throw their used and washed tetra packs. Aluminium within these tetra packs is taken and recycled by the companies which periodically collect these packs.

Some of the things that The Shri Ram School, Gurugram is doing right:
- Sewage treatment plant and manure pits

- The food scraps that are thrown, along with the preparatory food waste, go to the manure pits where they get decomposed to form manure. This manure is utilised by the school itself to sustain the myriad plants and pots on campus.

- The entire campus has coloured dustbins to allow students to dispose of trash quickly. Classrooms have two dustbins: one for wet waste (blue) and the other for dry waste (green).

- The contents of the wet waste dustbin go to the manure plant to decompose and form 'khaad'. An approximate 60 kg of manure is produced each month.

You will never have a Swachh Bharat if people don't take responsibility: Nitish Kapoor, Regional Director, RB South Asia

How wonderful would it be if while taking care of our own backyards, we could take care of other's frontyards as well. But I think even if we go and clean up waste thrown by someone else, it would set an example: Amitabh Bachchan

Momentum has picked up but there is a long way to go. We all need to join hands. The entire issue with waste management is that we forget that our backyard is someone's front yard. We all don't want waste around us but don't care about the rest of it: Swati Sambyal, Programme Manager, Environmental Governance (Municipal Solid Waste), Centre for Science and Environment

I feel that every time I travel, places are looking a lot cleaner. Certain areas of Mumbai which were known to be dirty are cleaner. I think there is a greater consciousness: Amitabh Bachchan on the impact of the Swachh campaign.

This is the agenda for Season 4 NDTV-Dettol Banega Swachh India campaign is to take the #Mere10Guz initiative forward.