THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: If left unattended, a tonne of untreated plastic waste can cause immense harm to the environment. Realising this, students of a government school in Thiruvananthapuram reduced the eco-hazard by converting nearly 1,300 kg of plastic waste into eco-bricks for use in construction.
An eco-brick is a plastic bottle densely packed with clean, dry, non-recyclable plastic to create a reusable building block.
Its use in construction is gaining traction the world over as it is economical, eco-friendly and also an inventive way to reuse plastic waste. It is also encouraged as conventional brick manufacturing requires removal of topsoil, thereby degrading agricultural land besides causing air pollution and requiring significant energy consumption.
The Student Police Cadets (SPC) of Government High School, Avanavanchery, are using the eco-bricks for construction of public utilities in schools and common areas nearby.
According Sabu Neelakantan Nair, the Community Police Officer (teacher in-charge of the SPC unit), the cadets have prevented nearly one tonne of plastic waste from mixing into the soil and water bodies nearby over the past four years.
“Close to 1,200 eco-bricks prepared by our students were handed over to Victory VHSS, Olathani for construction purposes. This is in addition to providing 400 eco-bricks to Sai Gramam at Thonnakkal and using another 700 bricks in our school for constructing outdoor benches,” Sabu said.
The latest initiative of the SPC cadets was construction of resting benches using 800 eco-bricks on the Attingal municipality premises for members of the public visiting the office for various purposes. An enterprise of green activists involved in manufacturing eco-bricks in the locality trains the cadets every year.
Eighty-eight cadets from the school are engaged in periodically collecting cleaned and dried plastic waste from the neighbourhood.
The collection is carried out with the partnership of residents’ associations, covering over 250 houses. The cleaned and dried plastic waste and bottles are handed over to the cadets on a fortnightly basis.
The students’ initiative has earned praise from Attingal municipality which is itself grappling with the growing waste in the town limits. Municipal chairperson S Kumari said the menace caused by plastic waste can be brought down considerably extent if other schools replicate the model.
This is not the first time that the student police cadets of Avanavanchery HS have hogged the limelight for their novel initiatives.
The cadets have been engaged in paddy cultivation on two acres of nearby land taken on lease. The SPC unit has also launched a rice brand named ‘Niravu’ which is marketed locally and is popular for the organic methods employed for its cultivation.