“Go clean your room!” Who hasn’t heard this yell from their parents? Almost every child has in their childhood.
If you dig a little deeper, there is more to the cry of anguish than just sheer frustration on your parents’ part.
Like others, we are also very concerned about keeping our houses and workplaces clean; perhaps there is special importance as our religion also promotes the idea of cleanliness, so much that is has been labeled as half the faith.
However, as a nation, we are only concerned about keeping things clean if it is our house or our workplace. When we see garbage on the streets, we simply turn a blind eye.
Why is that? This is a problem that is infested in our society and we need to work together to uproot it and bring about a worthy change.
Manage Waste, Recycle Is Essential for a Better Life
We are all aware of the three R’s for waste management: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
The problem, however, is that we are aware of things but we don’t act on them. So what stops us exactly? Is it the overbearing hard work that we will have to endure? Absolutely not. What stops us is the mindset and that is what we need to change.
Let’s go back to the basics and first define what recycling actually is.
Recycling is a process of converting waste materials into new materials and objects. It is an alternative method to conventional waste disposal that not only saves materials but also helps lower the greenhouse gas emissions. It can also help in reducing energy usage, air and water pollution.
The Dasani Discovery Challenge
To highlight the importance of recycling, its usefulness and application, Dasani, the bottled water brand of The Coca-Cola Export Corporation, has launched The Dasani Discovery Challenge.
So, let’s take a look at the challenge and its incentives.
The challenge is straightforward: come up with ideas for better plastic waste management.
All you have to do is just submit your ideas on how to better manage plastic waste by 31st December 2018. Just make sure you’re 18 years or older. Sorry young folks, the future is still bright for you.
Since it is a competition, of course, there is an incentive for coming up with brilliant ideas. Here’s the breakdown:
| 1st Prize | Rs. 500,000 |
| 2nd Prize | Rs. 300,000 |
| 3rd Prize | Rs. 200,000 |
We have also broken down the contending arenas:
- Plastic collection models and awareness creation strategies.
- Sorting model to sort plastic bottles out of the general plastic waste (shopping bags, wrappers, labels, food packaging etc.)
- Plastic recycling models for effective and efficient recycling
You have all got plenty of great ideas, but each entry can only submit one idea. Good thing though, entries can be in the form of teams of three. More power to you guys, but then a team leader will submit the entry.
Even if you don’t win, you’re helping the country with its plastic problem. Of all the recyclables, why plastic, you ask? Did you know so far of all the plastic ever created, we’ve really only recycled 9 percent.
Unlike glass that’ll just turn to sand or paper that can be plant food, plastic doesn’t decompose, that’s why.
So brainstorm and send some of that lightning to [email protected] with your full name as the subject.
Even if you hate proposal, it’s easy to just download the form from here and that will help with how you’re going to share your model.
Good luck, folks!
