DEHRADUN: Members of civil society teamed up with Dehradun Nagar Nigam for Plastic Mukt Abhiyan in Dehradun city and brought about behaviour change among the students. They recycled 2,343 kilograms of single use plastic waste from the participating 105 schools of the city.
Even as a door- to- door collection in Shimla city has become a model for solid waste collection in Himachal, but the Dehradun has shown a wayout as to how to bring about behavioural change among students about plastic waste.
Abhiyan, a three pronged plastic waste-awareness, segregation and behaviour change- program was a citizen-led initiative of the Dehradun Nagar Nigam.
Abhiyan was an innovative citizen engagement exercise as an integral part of the Swachh Survekshan 2022 mission in Dehradun.
“It nudged and encouraged students and their families to start the practice of waste segregation at a household level”, said Anoop Nautiyal, president of Dehradun based NGO, SDF. 
The Plastic-Mukt Abhiyan involved 105 schools in Dehradun and reached out to 48,224 students, teachers/staff and their families over a two month period, he said.
The major focus was on the collection of single use plastic and on spreading citizen centric information re- sustainable waste management practices.
The segregated and collected plastic was recycled through a chain of Nagar Nigam approved recyclers. “We are grateful for the support of all participating schools in the Plastic Mukt Abhiyan”, Nautiyal said.
As a part of the Abhiyan, each school has set up Plastic Banks in their campus where the segregated plastic waste brought by the students was collected.
“We are equally grateful that all schools appointed Plastic Sangrakshaks (School Principal), Plastic Yodhas (Senior Teacher/Staff) and Plastic Prahris (Plastic Class Monitors) in their school premises”.
“We are glad to share that we ended up building a community of 104 Plastic Sangrakshaks, 114 Plastic Yodhas and 1429 Plastic Prahris”, he said.
“We are delighted that we collected and recycled 2,343 kilograms of single use plastic waste from the participating schools. We are equally delighted that many schools took their own initiatives and conducted additional swachhata activities like street rallies, debates and clean ups in their campuses.
Their active participation made the Plastic Mukt Abhiyan a jan andolan, a student-led movement for cleanliness and swachhata in Dehradun.
Today as they celebrate the *World Environment Day 2022*. “This personal experience could be appropriate and inspiring to share with others”, Nautiyal said.
