“In this ‘Follow The Bottle’ month, our students track the journey of the bottle from source to end,” says Shyamala Raja, coordinator of Garbology, a programme on waste management underway in 10 schools (managed by the RAMCO group, of which five are government aided), in Rajapalayam, Tamil Nadu. Last month, in the ‘Map My Soft Drink’ programme, children learnt to make an informed choice about the container when they decide to have a soft drink. “When disposed, a PET bottle will remain in a landfill for hundreds of years, a metal container can be recycled, and a glass bottle can be reused at least 30 times, the responsibility of making a choice rests in our hands,” says Shyamala.
Conceptualised and created by Auroville-based social entrepreneurs Ribhu Vohra and Chandrah Nusselein, the Garbology journey started with the founding of WasteLess, a non-profit social enterprise in 2011. “We believe that, through education, we can initiate significant changes in the way we make, dispose, and think about waste. Our dream was that children also become changemakers at home. Many take this new knowledge home and inspire changes there.”
Impressed by the research behind the programme, Nirmala Raju, who heads the CSR initiatives of the Rajapalayam-based RAMCO group, introduced the concept at Arsha Vidya Mandir in Chennai in 2014. “We have the Swachh Bharat Mission but what is the process behind managing our waste?” she asks. Simultaneously she facilitated the subject in 10 schools, five government-aided and five under the RAMCO group at Rajapalayam. She also met the State Education Minister and the subject was integrated into textbooks in 2019 and is taught in 234 government schools in Tamil Nadu. The activity-based programmes were stalled during the pandemic but are now back in full swing.
