Women vow to make their village plastic free

Mangalore, February 28: Spnadana Trust, a social welfare NGO, organised a Waste Management Workshop on Sunday.

The workshop was held at the community hall in the small village in the out skirts of Mangalore called Preeti Nagar. About 65 women of the community, basically the members of self-help groups participated in the workshop.

The objective of the workshop was to make women sensitive towards the environment. Arif Padubbidri, senior reporter of Vijaya Karnataka daily, inaugurated the workshop.

In his inaugural address Arif emphasised that women can play a pivotal role in bringing about a change in the society. From Central Government to local bodies, everyone brings in new laws and rules to ban plastics. But they fail in executing these laws. Such ban appears only in the newspapers while the use of plastics continues. The real ban on plastics is possible only if every woman decides to discontinue the use of plastic.

He told the women that plastics are made of harmful chemicals such as vinyl and benzene which develop cancer. Even the workers in the plastic factory are badly affected. From the production stage to the utility stage and even when the plastics are burnt they constantly release poisonous chemicals into our food, or into the water bodies or in the air. Plastic is not only harmful to man but also to environment, soil, plants and animals, he said.

He explained how women could write a letter to the MCC to construct a recycling bin in the community were the people could dispose the plastic packets which would otherwise be littered on the sides of the road. This accumulated plastic can be then recycled rather than burning them and causing air pollution. By the end of his talk the women took up a resolution to make Preeti Nagar a plastic free community. They also decided to write a letter to the Mangalore City Corporation to construct such bins. The women also promised to reduce the use of plastics and to go for other alternatives.

The second session was conducted by Dr Hareesh Joshy of Department of Zoology, St Aloysius College. Dr Joshy is a rigorous campaigner of environmentalism.

His session was on vermi-compost. In the two hour session, Dr Joshy told the women how harmful chemicals are used as fertilizers and pesticides in growing crops. These chemicals enter our food chain and cause cancer in man.

Vermi-compost is a kind of manure that is prepared out of the household watse. The vermi-compost can be made at home and is more effective than the chemical fertilizers in the market, he said.

Dr Joshy demonstrated how the compost can be made at home in the flower pots. Since there is a huge demand for the vermi-compost in the market, he encouraged the women to make the compost in large quantity for commercial purpose.

The process of making the compost does not require scientific apparatus but a pot, little bit of water, coconut shells, house hold watses and cow dung. The compost requires 1 month and 21 days in all to be ready. The earthworm is added to the mixture only after the first 21 days. Since the earthworm multiply in number during the process, he said that they could make money by selling these worms as well, while informing that there is a huge demand for earthworms. At the end of the session, Dr Joshy asked the women to show a mock display of the process of vermi-compost preparation.

He also gave them further tips on using the compost, and other information.

Both the sessions were informative. Dr Joshy distributed a sample of vermi-compost to the women to apply it on thier plants to see the results. The programme was successful in meeting its objectives as the women were motivated into action towards projecting environment through waste management.