Diwali is just a few days away and almost every household in India will be knee deep in Diwali cleaning. This includes painting, brushing out the cobwebs and weeding out dust mites. Diwali ki safai takes time and how! If you haven’t started yet and need some inspiration, read all about what a few moms are doing in a suburb of Mumbai. This will definitely inspire you to kickstart your own cleaning campaign!
Image source:Edelweiss Real Estate
The idea was clear. Make their housing society – Rustomjee Ozone in Goregaon a zero waste campus. It started from responsibly segregating and recycling everyday waste generated at their campus. From starting small to orchestrating a complete waste management programme on campus, read on to see what these moms did!
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Identifying the sources of garbage in the society
“During our housing society celebrations, we used to see the amount of plastic ware that used to be littered and thrown everywhere and the amount of food that used to get wasted too was ridiculous. But we wondered as to what can be possibly done with this waste that was generated on all occasions.” says Shweta Vijayan, a member of the waste management team at Rustomjee Ozone.
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Seeking help from field experts
Meeting with industry experts and pioneers they formulated a plan that was tailor made for their society.
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Choosing festival celebrations to create awareness
Getting all 460 flats in the society to join the cause was a challenge. Hence these moms chose Independence Day celebrations as a platform to introduce the concept of waste management and discuss the areas of concern.
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Getting the younger generation to participate in the movement
They used the Ganpati celebrations to rally their kids to do a dance skit depicting various festivals that are celebrated in India and how the celebrations could become more eco-friendly.
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Creating an awareness campaign for the residents
Weekly sessions and door to door campaigns were organized, so residents could get their queries answered.
Organizing training sessions for housekeeping, maintenance, security staff and all other domestic help at the society.
Reaching out to the BMC
The BMC was more than happy to provide support to these moms to further their campaign. BMC has been sending bins to each house for waste segregation so a proper waste management system can begin right at home.
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All it takes is simple segregation of waste and now this society is on its way to become a zero waste society by next year. What that means is this, “When that happens, from our society, we will stop sending minimum 80 MT of waste and minimum 3 lakhs of plastic bags to the dumping ground annually. We have realised that whether you are a big society with 1000 houses or a small one with just 10 houses or even individual houses, its not a difficult task at all. We just need to draw inspiration from each other and make small efforts,” says Shweta Vijayan.
Does your housing society follow a waste management guide ? Share with us in the comments below.
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