‘1 Kg Of Rice For 1 Kg Of Plastic’ Initiative By Telangana’s Collector

Oct 30, 2019, 17:27 IST

C Narayana Reddy, District Collector of Telangana's Mulugu district, took a unique initiative to keep his district neat and clean.

He along with some others arranged a competition between school students. Whoever was able to collect the highest number of plastic bottles in the area in a span of one hour was given a cricket kit.

An hour later, Reddy and others were shocked to see that the students collected about 1000 plastic bottles from a tiny village. They were really shocked that even a small village can generate such a massive amount of plastic waste.

After this experiment, Reddy made up his min to start an initiative in order reduce the plastic pollution. He conducted a similar activity across 174 villages in the district.

“My intention is to stop the use of single-use plastic in the villages. So we communicated with all these villages and told them that for every 1 kg of plastic that they can provide us with, we will give them 1 kg of rice,” Reddy said to a daily.

“Rice is something people in rural areas are always in need of. Therefore, we thought it would be an incentive that would encourage these people to keep the village clean,” he added.

The programme was scheduled from October 16 to October 26.

As people got to know about the initiative, many of them came forward and to donate rice and joined hand with Reddy to make this programme succesful.

Over 31,000 kg of plastic has been collected through the programme and through school activities. The initiative has actually provided women and children with a livelihood, as they spend the day collecting plastic waste, and later visit the panchayat’s office to submit it and get rice in return.

After the successful completion of 10-day long programme, there was a permanent ban on single-use plastic across the villages.

This initiative was started by Reddy, as the environment is getting engulfed by plastic of its widespread usage and its durability component.

See few pictures during the programme in Mulugu district