By Bhamy V. Shenoy

This year’s theme of World Environment Day is “Ending Plastic Pollution” — much needed and urgent topic.

There will be many formal celebrations in Mysuru. Various educational institutions, NGOs, companies, government bodies etc. will be paying lip service to the plastic theme.

It will be just one day of listening to talks, even taking pledges, planting saplings (most will die) and forgotten till next year. Can we celebrate in a different way this year?

The best way to start a movement like keeping Mysuru clean of plastic pollution and in the process keeping Mysuru Clean is to get our children involved in a strategic way.

Each school should identify two or three committed and concerned teachers to take the leadership role to promote involvement of the children to keep the city clean.

Such selected teachers should develop a sound program to involve maximum number of teachers and students to keep their neighbourhood clean. Children should never be asked to collect garbage thrown by others. This is the mistake we have been committing.

Some schools often have clean-up drives around their schools  collecting garbage as a social service which end up more as a photo op though even if it is not the intention. For one day, the street is clean but next day people start throwing garbage again. Did we achieve anything? None.

Children should be taught first that they or their parents or their relatives should not throw any garbage on the road. Second, they should also be taught how to gently and courteously tell strangers not to throw garbage on the road. If students act as ‘wardens’ within their families and their neighbourhoods, we have a better chance of clean Mysuru.

The schools should impart basic lessons on the plastic menace — how micro-plastic is harming our health, how plastic pollution in oceans is severely harming aquatic life, difficulty of handling plastic waste etc. in fact it is part of the curriculum today.

If we have to create a “clean mindset” in our population, then kids are the key and it is relatively easy to make an impression on young minds and not on adults and grown-ups. After all, despite all the ads, warnings, lectures, etc. on plastic menace adults even today demand plastic bags while shopping.

In 2018, Mysore Grahakara Parishat (MGP)  initiated Environmental Students Wardens with the active involvement of the then DC Abhiram Shankar in five schools — Kautilya Vidyalaya, Mahajana Public School, Shanthala School, Lions Sevaniketan School and Vijaya Vittala School.

Back then, students Warden Programme succeeded only in Kautilya because of the keen interest taken by two teachers there — Principal Savitha and a young teacher, Roopa. It is from that experience I was suggesting that we should identify at least two or three committed teachers in each school.

Similarly, a highly dedicated and environmentally conscious Principal of Lions High School Dr. Roopa Karumbaya drew up a one year structured program, “My Clean City, My Responsibility” for the kids in the school.

If a critical mass of say 20 schools in Mysuru decide to take up “My Clean City, My Responsibility” on World Environment Day along the lines of Lions School, it may be the best way of celebrating the World Environment Day.