Daily Times

It’s not a secret anymore that our communities are generating a lot of trash nowadays. Amongst this, on average 4.3 pounds typical solid waste is being generated by an individual member of the community per day; 1.6 pounds more than the figures of 1960.

Significant energy and resources are consumed in transportation and disposal of the waste. As most of the solid waste comprises packaging, bottles, boxes, cans, grass clippings, furniture, clothing, and similar other stuff; it can easily be recycled for accruing splendid benefits. The commonly-used “3-R” phrase to describe this principle is: “Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle”.

By simply adhering to certain best practices i.e by not mixing individual categories of solid waste while disposing of it at very first instant; it can easily be collected and recycled. Unfortunately, our communities don’t follow these practices wherein cumulative disposal of waste leads to various disadvantages i.e extra efforts for segregation and even damages to the individual recyclable products.

By implementing the concept of waste hierarchy; reduce, reuse, recycle, recovery, and disposal it is much easier to recycle. Effective segregation of wastes means that less waste goes to land fill which makes it cheaper and better for people and the environment. It is also important to segregate for public health. In particular, hazardous wastes can cause long term health problems, so it is very important that they are disposed of correctly and safely and not mixed in with the normal waste coming out of your home or office.

There are a total 16 recognized universities in Islamabad, in them almost 570,000/- students are studying at the moment. We can well imagine the amount of waste being produced in these 16 universities. Our team researched in Bahria University and found that in one day almost 350 empty water bottles, 120 tins, 250 kg paper, 100 kgs of organic (food) waste goes to dustbins.

If we create awareness and then urge the managements to arrange segregation for the waste in these 16 universities it will not only help in reducing waste but most importantly it will help in educating 570,000 numbers of students about the importance of waste management while at institutes as well as back in their homes.

Similarly, if we have more diverse waste streams, we can see further cost savings. For some waste streams, we may even be able to sell it off and create a revenue stream. For example we spoke to a bottle recycler factory owner who was interested to collect the empty water bottles free of cost from BU and further he also told us that he can even pay for these empty bottles if they will be more than his minimum requirement.

So we decided to give it a try and to begin with as a pilot project in BU, we set up a station of different color dustbin drums with clear markings for segregation of waste. Each dustbin included labeling, making sure universities have enough accessible bins and making it clear for everyone why segregation is so important. So next time when a student or staff is presented with a choice to put a plastic bottle in a general waste bin or a plastic bin, one should reach over to the respective bin and pop it in there.

We monitored the bins for a few days and were surprised to see the results, in the first few initial days the waste in each bin was a mix of everything. But through frequent mentoring of students, we observed that students became more careful and started throwing their waste according to the markings on the bins.

We concluded from the pilot project that it is very much possible to make such an arrangement in all universities as well as all schools of Islamabad. The desired results will be the education of our generation about the importance of waste segregation for effective recycling of the segregated waste. With the help of local administrations, Govt initiatives, and the private sector dealing with recycling, our communities shall stand better educated in contributing towards their obligation for the War against Waste.