E-waste awareness program in school under Clean E-Bhubaneswar Project

Bhubaneswar: The School Awareness Program envisaged under the Clean E-Bhubaneswar Project was launched on Friday through a workshop ‘Magic of Electronics’ held at DAV Public School, Kalinga Nagar.

Over 300 students from Standards 7 and 8 participated.

Along with the awareness activities, the program also marked the commencement of the e-waste collection drive to be carried out at all participating schools and colleges across the city.

Among the participating schools and colleges, an E-waste Collection Challenge, a competition will also be launched soon and later in this year the winning institution with the highest collection of e-wastes, would be awarded.

Yash, a student said, “It is very important that we recycle our e-waste responsibly and send it through the recycling systems instead of giving it to the informal sector, and this awareness program has helped in seeing e-waste as resources and not as mere waste.”

Another student Debadipa said, “Students’ participation in such projects is quite essential. Actually, the project held in our school was quite amazing for us as we got to know about a lot of things, especially about e-waste and its management. I had cleared my doubts about cleaning up villages and I want to participate actively in such mission. I am also interested to know about the role of students in this.”

Shristi,  a student said, “Each and every individual should not to be greedy and must put efforts in making a greener planet by increasing the lifespan of the electronics items.”

The principal of DAV Public School, Kalinga Nagar Bipin Kumar Sahoo said, “The future of this earth lies in the hands of next generation. We have to make aware and inspire the young students to take up the new challenge.’’

The Clean E-Bhubaneswar Project under Under the ‘IFC-EU Eco-Cities’ Programme, aims to ensure that the city’s e-waste is collected and recycled in an environmentally responsible manner.

To achieve this, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group, in partnership with implementing organizations, Sofies Sustainability Leaders Pvt. Ltd. and Siddha Development Research and Consultancy (SDRC), seeks to establish a working model for e-waste collection within the limits of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) that would be self-sustaining and serve as a model for effective e-waste management in other cities as well.

Besides BMC, the Clean e-Bhubaneswar project is also getting support from Orissa State Pollution Control Board in generating awareness among consumers, households, schools, colleges and other institutions regarding e-waste.

The ‘Magic of Electronics’ workshop is designed as a high-impact program for high school students to create lasting awareness on e-waste.

It has two modules. While Module-I is an interactive info-lesson on basic knowledge about electronics and e-waste and gives student’s Insights into key issues related to e-waste through presentations, discussions, quizzes, and interactive tasks, Module -II consists of a supervised hands-on ‘tear-down’ session by the students of their own end-of-life electronic products, typically, mobile devices, that will then be sent for recycling.

The workshop has been designed to motivate students to become advocates for proper e-waste handling and to motivate collection of e-waste in their communities through an e-waste collection drive and the competitive inter-school E-waste Collection Challenge.

Dedicated e-waste collection bins will be placed at each participating school and college for the duration of two weeks. The winners of the E-waste Collection Challenge – the school and the college with the highest volume of e-waste collected will be declared in September 2018.

The BMC has invited schools and colleges to join this initiative and take part in the awareness program. Schools and colleges can visit the Clean E-Bhubaneswar initiative website http://www.cleanebhubaneswar.in/ or call the toll-free number 1800-120-2723 for further information.