Thiruvananthapuram: The city corporation may have found the best messiahs for source-level waste management – children. Soon, Thiruvananthapuram will roll out a project in which school students will be involved in making kitchen bins more popular.
They will be taught the benefits of source-level methods of managing organic waste. The details of the programme are still being charted out, but its desired result is when the children convince parents to bring home kitchen bins. “Children will be introduced to devices which can deal with waste at the source itself. Then interested children will be able to go home and get the consent of parents. Then non-profit organisations which have been involved in source-level waste management in the city will help install the bins at homes,” says a corporation official.
The corporation has relied on children, especially NSS volunteers, for their pre-monsoon cleaning programme. Health Standing Committee chairperson K. Sreekumar says, “children were involved in the pre-monsoon programme. This time, around 1000 NSS volunteers in the city accompanied health officials for door-to-door campaigning on precautions to avoid water-borne diseases.”
Earlier, children were used in such door-to-door campaigning only during retreating monsoon as schools are closed during the April-May months when pre-monsoon drives happen, according to corporation officials. However, now the corporation could get the children to be part of pre-monsoon drive as the civic body has been associated with NSS coordinators in many city schools. For, there have been a slew of waste management campaigns in which NSS volunteers were made part of.
In recent years, children had proved to be effective advocates of various initiatives. Homestead organic farming, for example, became popular, especially after children became its proponents in school. “Children are more observant and are passionate about what they do. It would be highly effective to involve them,” says a corporation official.
