BENGALURU:St Joseph’s institution in Bengaluru has distributed 1,800 notebooks made of recycled answer sheers at 12 government students in the city.
Around 16,000 answer sheets, stocked over three years, were collected from the colleges and instead of being burnt, they were sent to the godown of ITC Limited in Fraser Town. These were then transported to Coimbatore for recycling.
A whopping 3,867 kg of answer papers were recycled. Over 85 trees would need to be cut down to make so much paper. The process would have required 101 kilo litres of water and 1,740 units of energy.
KSRTC Shantinagar Government School is among the 12 schools that received these notebooks. Forty-eight students of classes 1 to 7 study here.
Sukanya, a teacher who has been working at the school for the past 14 years, felt the notebooks would help the students while also protecting the environment.
Muskan, a Class 7 student, said the notebooks were beneficial. “These are of better quality than what we got last year,” she said, with a smile.
Apart from this, the outreach programme has also had student volunteers teaching basic maths and spoken English to the students.
The college has also joined hands with the Bangalore Traffic Police to manage traffic at several signals including MG Road, Richmond Circle and Brigade Road during peak hours. Volunteers also spread awareness about the importance of wearing helmets and avoiding the use of mobile phones while driving by displaying posters at the signals.
The institution has also adopted Manvi taluk in Raichur district and has planted 2,000 saplings since last November.
Around 80 undergraduate Commerce students, headed by Brother Philip, coordinator of the Outreach programme, were involved in a cleaning drive along with the members of Beautiful Bangalore, an NGO.
Community service, a 20-hour programme, is mandatory for every student. Such activities are held throughout the year with each department of the institution taking turns.