Title of Best Practice (2019-2020)

“Plastic Free Campus”

Objectives of the Practice:

• To Keep Campus plastic free.
• To promote students and staff to ‘Say no to plastic’.
• To make awareness about deleterious effects of use of plastic to environment.
• To distribute the cloth bags to the students and staff to avoid use of plastic.

            Plastic is a big menace to the environment, keeping in mind the Institute has taken an initiative to avoid plastic in the campus. For this institute has set the above objectives and working on it.

The context:

            As use of plastic is dangerous to the environment and causes major concern regarding environment pollution and also adversely influence human and animal health. There is no safe way to dispose plastic waste and waste causes serious damage to environment during its production process, during its usage and during its disposal process. Toxic chemicals release during manufacturing process is another significant source of the negative environmental impact of plastics. It is quite difficult to implement this practice, but it need to be practiced for environment safety. Larger items, such as plastic bags and straws, can choke and starve marine life, while smaller fragments (micro plastics) can cause liver, reproductive, and gastrointestinal damage in animals. Humans are also vulnerable.

The Practice:

            To avoid plastic in campus, firstly we made awareness among the students and staff about its role in environmental pollution and how it has adverse effect on the human and animal health. We also gave a lecture to the students regarding plastic and its role in the environment pollution and the problems associated with its disposal. Natural decomposition of plastic can last from 400-1000 years and few types of plastics are non-degradable as well. Plastic materials clog waterways, lakes etc. Many animals eat plastic materials and die. Plastic is widely used in packaging. Firstly staff has taken an initiative to avoid plastic in campus. Staff started use of craft/ biodegradable bags and set an example that how to avoid plastics. Students also advised not to use plastic wrapping in their daily use. College has provided the biodegradable bags to needy students.

Evidence of Success:

            Students and staff started to use alternate to plastic bags and other plastic material in the campus. Campus becomes a plastic free campus. There is no clogging of drainages in the college campus and around area.

Problems Encountered and Resources Required:

            It required some time to convince the students about not to use plastic in college campus, but once convinced students and staff start avoiding the plastic. College required arrangement of small budgetary provision to provide the alternate bags to the students. Overall campus becomes plastic free within a short period which is a demand of the nature to sustain the environment ecofriendly.