Kolkata: The West Bengal Panchayat Department recently organised a “Plastic Donation Camp” in all rural areas across the state. The special focus was on areas around temples, markets and tourist spots in rural locations.
The idea behind this initiative by the Panchayat Department was to increase awareness against plastic pollution and also to initiate actions that can show concrete results. That has already been achieved to a large extent. The three-day camps across the state led to a total retrieval of 17 lakh 47,750 kg of plastic waste.
This shows that the awareness campaigns to date against plastic pollution have not had much effect.
The camps have, though, focused on plastic choking drains or killing domestic animals.
Many people were interested in donating plastic across these camps. Nadia collected the maximum plastic waste of 1 lakh kg, followed by Jalpaiguri with 58,000 kg and Paschim Medinipur with 52,000 kg.
All the plastic waste collected will be used to make products like chairs, tables and water glasses, as well as covers.
Half of the plastic waste collected will first be made into granules. These plastic articles will be prepared from these granules only.
The remaining plastic waste will be used to make roads. The amount gathered will be sufficient to make 200 roads.
People have donated plastic bottles, packets and carry bags, among others. Seeing the interest generated, more such donation camps will be organised in the future.
