Event On : 18 May 2018

The Assembly of God Church School, Park Street in association with iLEAD organized Greenpoint, an orientation programme on waste management, segregation and disposal. It is an initiative taken up by GREENAGERS Group of AGCS. The key speaker was Ms. Rupa Pandit, coordinator of Greenagers- an environmental activist group at Assembly of God Church School who has been playing a leading role in scientific waste management for more than five years.

The programme was arranged for the mentors and housekeeping staff of iLEAD to sensitize them about the importance of segregation and recycling of waste. The programme highlighted on the objectives and purpose of waste management. "Mixed waste is a threat and the only solution is Segregation and Recycling", said Ms. Pandit.

The reason behind starting this initiative is lack of provision and monitoring of waste by the municipal corporation in urban and rural sectors of India. Ms. Pandit spoke about the benefits of using dry waste for recycling. She mentioned how creative and useful products can be made using dry- wastes that will lead to an eco-friendly environment. During the day, she also focused on the benefits and usefulness of recycling. Throughout the programme, Ms. Pandit tried to bring into focus the state of Developed nations vis-a-vis underdeveloped nations and their waste disposal strategies. Countries like USA and UK have been efficiently able to manage their waste and use it as a resource. On the contrary, at present, India needs to work upon their waste disposal management. Ms. Pandit introduced her dream project GREENPOINT that looks into collecting segregated waste and turning it into something beautiful and beneficial for the state, city and country. The introduction of colour-coded bins is a strategy applied by GREENPOINT in order to execute the waste management plans.

The session came towards an end with Ms. Pandit urging the audience to collaborate and come together for the betterment of society. "To make it possible, we should start it immediately. Only with the initiative, we can promise a safer and greener environment." said Ms Mrittika, mentor of iLEAD. Ms. Pandit concluded the session with the hope that every individual will come up with their own contribution to create a environment which is clean, safe and healthy.

The main elements of waste management orientation program which came through the speech of Ms. Rupa Pandit can be summarized as follows-

Proper activities and action required from all part of society to manage wastes from its inception to its final disposal

Collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste together with monitoring and regulation

Legal and regulatory framework for effective waste management endeavor through guidance on recycling

A large proportion of waste management deal with municipal solid waste that is created through household, industrial and commercial activity

Central principles of waste management should be followed which include- waste hierarchy, life cycle of a product, resource efficiency and polluters pay principle

Waste handling and transport should be done through waste collection vehicle, Dustbin and Waste sorting.

Reuse of waste should be done in areas of Biological reprocessing, Energy recovery, Pyrolysis, Resource recovery and Business environmental Sustainability

Liquid waste management through Sewage sludge

Benefits of waste management include- improving economic efficiency, reducing adverse impacts on health, reducing or eliminating adverse impacts on environment and following effective waste management practices for creation of robust economy and clean environment

Adopting new technologies of waste management such as Radio frequency identification tags, GPS and integrated software packages which enable better quality data to be collected without the use of estimation or manual data entry

Recycling is a vital component of waste management which should include the elements of resource recovery, kerbside collection and single stream recycling

The role of the corporate world through environment responsibility program as a part of CSR initiative for effective waste management practices.