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Tetra Pak ropes in students to save the environment

The food processing and packaging solutions company is promoting waste management across education campuses in India through festivals and fellowship projects. Prachi Rege reports

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Organisations, governments and several important business institutions have trained their guns on saving the environment. Each stakeholder is attempting to conserve resources and promote sustainable development. There is also a concentrated effort to develop the habit of recycling. Since the last three years, Tetra Pak is looking to drive attention towards waste management as a means to sustain the environment. As part of this campaign, the mulitnational has been conducting events and activities on education campuses across the country. 

One of them is the TRASH (Thinking, Reflecting and Acting for a Sustainable Habitat) festival. It is  organised in association with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), and focuses on the concept of recycling. Both organisations have also roped in local environment group R U Reducing, Reusing, Recycling (RUR), and popular supermarkets like Sahakari Bhandar and Reliance Fresh in the city to help the cause. The festival which is generally conducted on a school campus, propogates 'green habits' among youngsters. “TRASH is our way to build a platform that fosters an attitude towards creating a safe and clean environment for the future by engaging the youth in the process," says Jaideep Gokhalecommunications director-South Asia Markets, Tetra Pak. 

Tetra Pak and TERI have also set up Project SEARCH, an initiative that sensitises students across the country towards the concept of recycling. “As part of the project, we help educational institutes set up collection centres for the collection of dry waste, recyclables and used cartons, since these are 100% recyclable. The collected items are then sent to recycling centres where they are converted into useful products such as furniture and stationery,” he explains. To encourage innovative initiatives toward sustaining the environment, both organisations also run  LEADEarthSHIP projects. “These are undertaken under STEP (Sensitizing, Training and Educating Peers) programme, a part of Project SEARCH where we empower students with project management and team building skills,” says Gokhale.

From promoting 'green consumerism' to developing alternative ways of tackling unemployment through environment initiatives, the duo includes different kinds of activities in their campaign. 

 Two years ago, Aditya Bali, then a class XII student at St Mary's School, Dwarka, New Delhi, who participated as a LEADEarth Fellow, came up with the idea of building a sound proof room using cartons. Bali, an avid music student, thought of this novel concept, when the music class practice sessions at school, proved to be disturbing to others on the campus. “Since soundproofing solutions were too expensive, I had to come up with an alternative,” explains Bali, who is now a second year BTech Biotechnology student studying in Amity University, Uttar Pradesh. Since his school was already in partnership with TERI, Bali was already involved in different innovative activities through recycling. “Our environment is the cradle of life and I am passionate towards protecting it. In today's world, where technology is years ahead of man, we should take care of our resources and use them carefully. Recycling plays an important part in this process. We might well be on our way to apocalypse if we don’t act now,” signs off Bali.

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