Sirmaur District Admin to control plastic waste with Polybricks
Plastic is one of the worst pollutants causing unprecedented damage to the ecosystem. To eliminate plastic pollution from the environment an awareness campaign is being carried out in district Sirmaur. District Administration of Sirmaur has launched a campaign to make the district polythene-free by making polybricks for eradication of polythene.
A Polybrick is prepared by filling single-use polythene such as empty wrappers of toffees, chocolates, maggi, snacks, chips, shampoo pouches, milk packets and other waste plastic in a strong plastic bottle of cold drinks and other beverages, and pressed into the bottle with a stick. A strong polybrick is readied after filling it completely with plastic leaving no space and making it compact.
In an exhibition organized by the District Administration at the Shri Renuka Ji International Fair in the year 2019, a model of poly toilet made with polybricks was showcased, which was a centre of attraction for the people visiting the fair.
As a part of this cleanliness campaign, the District Administration had also launched ‘Ek Din School Ke Naam’ campaign, under which students collected clean and littered polythene and dry waste, and made polybricks out of it. The campaign will be carried out on every 1st and 4th Saturday till March 2020. Under this campaign, defaulters would be identified and made aware regarding cleanliness of environment. After two awareness drives, the defaulters will be challaned.
Two phases of this campaign have been completed in which a total of 80,018 students from 2031 schools in the district have so far collected 4990 kilogram of polythene, cleaning an area of about 916 kilometres and made 5435 polybricks. Taking this cleanliness campaign to another level, the District Administration has now launched ‘Ek Din Panchayat Ke Naam’ to make all panchayats polythene-free.
Mahila Mandals and Anganwadi workers are also taking an active part in this cleanliness campaign of District Administration and are making a significant contribution in making the environment clean. Recently, Mahila Mandal and Anganwadi workers of Ambwala-Sainwala area in Nahan also cleaned their wards and surrounding areas. They made about 70 polybricks from the collected plastic waste and handed it over to Deputy Commissioner Sirmaur in his office.
In another such event, women of Kando village of Badol Panchayat of Haripurdhar area of the district, collected about 10 kilograms of plastic and polythene from their village and surrounding areas. They had made polybricks of the collected waste and handed it over to panchayat.
About 9000 kg plastic waste has so far been collected and nearly 20,000 polybricks have been prepared by District Administration to make the environment clean and polythene-free by June 2020. The administration has been encouraging people to make district Sirmaur polythene-free by constructing benches, flower pots, toilets, boundary walls with polybricks at various places.
Recently, District Sirmaur has secured second position nationwide after district Dibrugarh of Assam, in the innovative solutions for plastic waste management an endeavour of Ministry of Rural Development, for designing polybricks by using waste plastic. Deputy Commissioner, Sirmaur, Dr. R.K. Pruthi received this award from Secretary, Union Ministry for Water and Sanitation, Parameswaran Iyer and Bollywood Actor Amir Khan in Delhi.
The purpose of polybricks is to make environment neat and clean by making it polythene-free, disposing of single-use plastics such as wrappers of toffees, chocolate, maggi, snacks, biscuits and chips, shampoo pouches, milk packets and refined pouches, at household level and to make people aware regarding reuse of plastic waste by making polybricks.
