COIMBATORE: A Coimbatore corporation middle school at Masakalipalayam has collected 3.5 tonne of dry waste over the last three years through an incentive-based drive to promote sustainability and waste management among young minds. The initiative, titled ‘Well-being Out of Waste’ (WOW), is being implemented in collaboration with ITC and curated by Residents Awareness Association of Coimbatore (RAAC).Under this initiative, students are encouraged to collect and bring recyclable waste from their homes and neighbourhood to the school. In return, the school management rewards them with essential stationery items, effectively turning trash into a valuable currency for education.The initiative was introduced in the year 2024 to conduct the drive once in every term during the academic year.School teacher P Sakthivel, said, “In the launch year, 1,018 kg of waste was collected. The following year, about 1.200 kg was collected, and this year it has reached 1.500 kg. The increase in the numbers indicates the enthusiasm among students.” For every kilogram, Rs 10 is offered by the company. “So, students, along with their parents, bring in as much waste as possible to convert it into money and get their desired stationery. Moreover, landfilling of this collected waste has been avoided because children have been collecting the dry waste from their daily actions, including water and juice bottles.”R Raveendran, secretary of RAAC, said, “We proposed to cover all corporation schools for which approval was denied in the previous years. But this year we have again proposed the same initiative to be implemented across all corporation schools. There are more than 70 corporation schools. If each of the schools can collect at least a tonne in one drive, then easily we could collect 70 tonne of dry waste.”
