CHENNAI: M Rathidevi, a Class 10 student of Cantonment Board High School is on a mission. Her oversized T-shirt spells it out clearly: ‘Zero garbage’. For about 250 students of the school, this was a common mission to participate in a rally on Tuesday morning — to create awareness on garbage segregation.Carrying placards that screamed messages about the need to segregate waste and avoid using plastics, the young mascots, sporting yellow caps and white Tshirts, caught the attention of passers-by with their slogans on ‘need to conserve the environment’.The one-hour rally that took off from Cantonment Board High School and covered the surrounding areas of Seven Well Street, North Parade Road, Nazarathpuram, Karayar Koil Street and Butt Road, was the initiative of the St Thomas Mount cum Pallavaram Cantonment office and the NGO Hand in Hand to highlight the need for garbage segregation.Speaking to the City Express, Cantonment Board CEO, Vijay Bhaskar, said that the garbage segregation initiative that began in December, 2009 will be extended to cover more households, shops and restaurants.In the first phase, almost 3,400 households in the cantonment area were covered.“The waste segregation pattern in the area involves collection of garbage in the households at 7am in the morning. Residents are allotted two colour-coded dustbins, red for non-bio degradable waste and green for bio-degradable waste.The biodegradable waste collected through this process is used for vermicomposting in the shed in Nazarathpuram. The board will soon expand this decentralised management facility by constructing two such sheds in Pallavaram and Nandambakkam,” Vijay Bhaskar added.The Cantonment Board is also planning to step up its awareness campaign about the detrimental effect of plastic on the environment.“Next week, 25 student teams will distribute pamphlets on avoiding use of plastic carry bags in the area,” he said.V Parisutham, assistant project director of the SWM (Solid Waste Management) project of Hand In Hand, who is playing a pivotal role in helping the Board implement this project, says that the 33 ‘green friends’ who collect the segregated garbage in the area, will soon be covering an additional 10,000 households in the organisation’s second phase.Elected member of the Cantonment board, T Vasuki, who has been in office for the past three years, feels that the rally will help in creating awareness among the parents of the school children about the importance of waste segregation.“Not all residents take the responsibility to segregate waste. We hope that parents who see their wards marching for the cause will put in the effort to follow the measures taken by the board and support us,” she said.
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