IITians on mission to recycle cartons….Dipti Sonawala
Students of IIT-Bombay continue to add to their institute’s Green Campus Initiative started in July, in different ways. This time, 22 students who are also part of the organising team of Techfest 2011, have decided to recycle tetrapaks on the campus. They are also placing dustbins made of tetrapaks all over the campus.
The students will give the tetrapacks to an NGO which will get them recycled. The team behind the idea has also decided to spread the message of a green campus and promote tetrapak recycled notebooks to students from other colleges who visit the campus during the Techfest, scheduled from 7 to 9 January. They also plan to sell these notebooks at the store in the IIT-B campus.
Neeraj Kookada, manager, media and marketing, Techfest 2011 and a student of third year Civil Engineering said, “Making the campus green and eco-friendly is the need of the hour. This is the first time the Techfest will be focusing on conservation on campus. The capacity of a tetrapak is 200 ml and around 100 are consumed in each hostel canteen per day. In all we have 13 hostels, so nearly 1,300 waste tetrapaks are collected each day. They can be used to make sustainable and eco-friendly alternative to dustbins, roof shelters to keep ceilings cool, notebooks etc. In all, around 1.3 cubic meters of landfill can be saved by the proper collection and recycling of tetrapaks. A total of 474.5 cubic meter of landfill will be saved over a year.”
Vishu Mahajan, a third year Computer Science student and event manager of Techfest 2011, said, “We didn’t know how tetrapaks can be recycled, so we got in touch with an NGO called Parisar Bhagini Vikas Sangh (PBVS).”
“We have 16 tetrapak dustbins and have placed them all over the campus, just to collect used tetrapaks. The NGO will send them to a company that makes notebooks from them. If the initiative is a success it will be easier for us to convince the authorities at the institute to get a centralised recycling system within the campus.”
Kalpana Andhare, a volunteer with PBVS said, “There are around 8,000- 10,000 students in IIT-B’s Powai campus. So the consumption of beverages from tetrapaks will be high. The tetrapaks collected will be sent to Vapi to the Daman Ganga paper mills which makes notebooks from recycled tetrapaks.”
* The team has placed 16 dustbins made from used tetrapaks across campus