Milk Bag Recyclathon
The Milk Bag Recyclathon started when I did a summer programme with Tribes For Good. In it, I was able to collect 154 milk bags to give for recycling, but I knew this initiative had much more potential, waiting to be unearthed.
While cleaning the neighbourhood was a delightful experience, I wanted a permanent solution to the problem of thoughtlessly discarded plastic.
So, after I parted with Tribes For Good, I decided to launch the initiative on an even bigger scale. I formed a team of 4 to help me carry out the initiative efficiently and cover as many households as possible. While my peers had already spread the talk of my initiative among their friends and family, I needed to reach an even wider audience. I pasted posters on milk shops and all over the community with the aim of attracting the interest of strangers.
Such a large-scale initiative initiated a conversation in my neighbourhood about improper waste management and how it has become a problem. Thanks to the voices of many, this conversation reached the Residents’ Welfare Association meetings, to which I was invited as an advisor. This eventually led to the establishment of an efficient waste management system in our, and surrounding, neighbourhoods.
In the end, we were able to collect more than 10 thousand milk bags from about 500 households.
After collection, we sent the milk bags to our partnered recycler who treated them to form plastic pellets for repurposing.
There has been a noticeable rise in waste disposal awareness in my neighbourhood. People have become more mindful of the different ways needed to dispose off different types of waste and recyclers are contacted more frequently. I feel ecstatic to make such a change in my community. This was the first of many initiatives which I look forward to undertaking.