Waste segregation meaning, benefits and methods were demonstrated to pre-school students as a year- long project from June 2017 to April 2018 to achieve SDG 13. It was initiated on the World Environment Day, June 2017 at all the pre-schools of our Partner Organization.

To reduce the burden on the city’s saturated dumping grounds, the municipality made it mandatory to segregate waste. However there was constant news of inconvenience and health hazards faced due to many societies failing to abide to it. Dumping grounds are reaching saturation and health of rag pickers keeps deteriorating as they get cuts of glass/needles while collecting mixed garbage and further thus catch many infections. Public is ignorant of these hazards and many are unaware how to do it.

We worked with Early Years section in a chain of schools of Mahatma Education Society for carrying out waste segregation as a year-long project. We first worked with their preschool teachers and enabled and educated them. Large waste segregated bins were put in place all over in all those schools and we held demonstrations for the students to understand it. Informative mails were sent to parents also asking to share pictures of segregating waste at home. We also worked for advocacy with Municipal Commissioner, New Panvel to work it at city level.

With this project, the toddlers became the driving cause for families to adopt waste segregation as a regular practice and it has now become a habit. They not only insisted in bringing a change but they were agents of change assisting their family to know how to exactly go about it. Middle school and college students also got to learn about the hazards of mixing waste and they also became pressure groups to bring about change in their homes and around. This has helped us build awareness for caring for our planet.