The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) has started a new initiative among students called 'Zero Plastic Starts with Me,' to create awareness about the dangers of plastic at an early age.
Under this initiative, students will be directly involved in managing plastic wastes. Each student will have to fill a plastic bottle with plastic waste products like chocolate, or biscuit wrappers.
The civic body expects around 50,000 students to participate in the awareness programme.
'Zero Plastic Starts with Me' is an innovative initiative that will teach children about plastic prevention measures. It will be executed in collaboration with the Heart Foundation, a charitable organization working in the field of education.
“We expect that more than 50,000 school children will be involved in this initiative to promote and disseminate the ban on plastics, through which children can inform their families and neighbours about the ill effects of the use of plastics,” said an official attached to the initiative. He added that students from class second to tenth will participate in the activity and each participating student will be given an attractive testimonial by the corporation.
Apart from this, at every ward one school will get the 'Zero Plastic Waste School' award. One school from eight wards which will collect the maximum number of plastic bottles will get a special award for 'Zero Plastic Waste School'.
Similarly, one student from each ward who collects the maximum weight of plastic bottles will be honoured with 'Zero Plastic Waste Champion - Ward' and the best performing student in Municipal Corporation will be honoured with 'Zero Plastic Waste Navi Mumbai Champion'.
The plastic bottles collected by the students participating in this activity will be deposited in their school by December 4. On December 05, the civic body will collect all the bottles. The collected plastic bottles will be used by the corporation for innovation under the concept of 'Waste to Sustainability'.
“Plastic is very harmful and through this initiative, students and their parents will become aware of dangers it has,” said the municipal commissioner Abhijeet Bangar.
