Chennai: IIT Madras launched a campaign named — Punch the Plastic — on Tuesday, which deploys a new method to collect clean and dry plastic packaging for recycling on campus. A hackathon for monkey proof food waste dustbin and developing a mobile app to collect information whether a particular household is separating plastic and organic waste were also among other initiatives to make the campus a sustainable one.
IIT Madras students have designed two models of simple hook devices to collect clean and dry plastic packaging for recycling.
“Plastic used for packaging items, like snack packets and thin plastics from food delivery executives are non-recyclable. They becomewet and dirty when mixed with other organic waste. They would often end up in dump sites or water bodies. If they clean, dry and save it on these hooks, the clean and dry plastics have more value and pay you as well,” said professor Indumathi Nambi, faculty advisor, Sustainable Campus Collective, IIT Madras.
The hooks are wall mountable or can be kept separately in the house. “It is typically a low-tech device. But, it will create an awareness on segregation of plastic waste,” she added A hackathon for monkey proof food waste dustbin also launched on Tuesday. “It is a unique problem to the IIT Madras campus. Whatever design we make, the monkeys are outsmarting us. We have to keep on evolving,” Indumathi said. The IIT Madras also plans to develop an app to know whether a particular household is segregating the waste or not.
“A waste picker can record the details whether the people are segregating waste or not. If we monitor, then people will segregate waste. Later, such an initiative can be expanded to the city as well,” she added.
Hostels, academic zones, residential zones, places of worship, shops and schools will be covered under the initiative. Former IAS officer Santa Sheela Nair, IIT Madras dean (planning) Ligy Philip, dean (students) Nilesh J Vasa and others participated in the launch.
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https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/iit-madras-launches-campaign-to-segregate-plastic-waste-on-campus/articleshow/95089341.cms
