Hyderabad: Reinforcing its commitment towards building a Swachh Bharat, ITC Limited today announced the launch of the “Swachh Vidyalaya” programme in schools. This is a joint initiative of ITC’s WOW Clubs in Schools programme, which is an extension of ITC’s ‘Wellbeing Out of Waste’ (WOW), Department of Education, Telangana State and Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).
The programme is created to encourage school students to practise and spread awareness about waste segregation at source and sustainable management of waste.
- Mayor, Dr Bonthu Rammohan, embarks upon ‘ITC-WOW Club’s new initiatives to motivate and encourage the next generation to contribute to ‘Swachh Bharat’
- The programme educates school students to practise source segregation and sustainable management of waste in schools and spread awareness in their neighbouring communities
- 17 schools and 16 students were awarded in the Inter-School Recycling Championship Awards Ceremony to celebrate the success of the previous year
Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Sanjay Singh, Member, Corporate Management Committee, and Chief Executive, Paperboards and Specialty Papers Division, ITC Ltd., said,“We at ITC, are grateful that, Dr. Bonthu Rammohan, Hon’ble Mayor has lent us his gracious presence to launch “Swachh Vidyalaya”, which is the new ‘ITC-WOW Clubs in Schools’ initiative. Children are the future citizenry of this nation and their contribution is pivotal for achieving Swachh Bharat and Swachh Hyderabad.
We had successfully launched ‘ITC-WOW Clubs in Schools’ initiative in the year 2017 with the purpose of raising awareness among school children on waste segregation and further engage them as behavioural change agents for spreading the awareness in their respective neighbourhood areas.
We have also started the “Clean Communities Championship” and “Inter-School Recycling Championship Awards Ceremony” to lift children’s motivation and contribute to the Government’s goal of achieving a Swachh and Swasth Bharat.”
ITC’s WOW initiative, aligned with the Government’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, spreads awareness about waste segregation and management through innovative methods. The “Swachh Vidyalaya” is a larger objective to create a cleaner and better environment and improve hygiene.
This programme would help in reducing the dumping of waste in and around the school campuses and address the challenge of environmental degradation. It will also help promote segregation of waste at the source so that all the dry recyclables get recycled and wet waste is converted into organic compost to be used as manure for kitchen gardens and farmers.
Awareness and motivation among children, who are the future of India, is critical towards achieving and maintaining society’s cleanliness goals. Keeping this in view, ITC WoW started “Clean Communities Championship” and “Inter-School Recycling Championship Awards” Ceremonies to keep up spirit of the next generation, that will help take this initiative to the next level.
Waste segregation and management help in the retrieval and recycling of paper, which would have been sent to landfills and proportionately contributes to the reduction of global warming. It also creates direct and indirect employment opportunities.
As part of the initiative, GHMC, Department of Education, Government of Telangana and ITC WOW have joined hands to implement a major awareness campaign across 5000 selected schools in Hyderabad and Telangana by creating “Swachh Vidyalaya” aimed at developing appropriate knowledge, attitude and behaviour about waste management among children.
GHMC and ITC WOW will also be jointly conducting “Clean Communities Championship” in Hyderabad to create awareness on the importance of source segregation in households. Over 300 gated communities in Hyderabad will also be covered under the program.
ITC’s flagship initiative Wellbeing out of Waste (WOW), that has covered 89 lakh citizens, 48 lakh school children across 7 states of the country since inception, works in close collaboration with municipal authorities to create end-to-end sustainable and scalable solutions for municipal waste. It creates a sustainable livelihood for nearly 15,000 waste collectors.
WOW, activities start right from creating awareness and behaviour change (to achieve source segregation), support collection and transportation of segregated wastes and the creation of appropriate platforms and networks that support reuse and recycling of all solid waste categories, with benefits flowing to the collectors and segregation of waste. WOW has in the process created sustainable livelihoods for waste collectors and social entrepreneurs.