“We have failed in our responsibility to protect the environment. This initiative is our attempt to teach the younger generations to appreciate and love the environment as early as they can, in the hope that they will not repeat the mistakes we committed,” says G. Gopalakrishna Murthy, Executive Director and Member Secretary of Tirupati-based Academy of Gandhian Studies (AGS) about WOW (Wellbeing Out of Waste), a CSR initiative of ITC Limited.
The ITC is implementing WOW in many places including Telangana, Karnataka, Delhi and Varanasi in tie-up with local NGOs. In Andhra Pradesh AGS is its implementing agency, trying to inculcate the habit of source segregation of waste among the citizens. “We consider waste as a resource and we have been working on this project since 2016 to education children of the future generation,” says Mr. Murthy, speaking to The Hindu.
The AGS coordinators active across Andhra Pradesh have so far reached out to 27,46,726 children in 4,114 schools and collected waste of 12,000 MT in the past seven years. “In the current academic year alone, we have educated 2,50,000 students and collected 1,900 MT of waste from 577 schools.
