Plastic Recyclothon 2.0: NGO collects, recycles it into benches, bins, pencils

MUMBAI: The next time you rest on a green bench at a civic park, you may want to thank some schoolchildren and college-goers, housing societies, bankers, citizen groups and corporates who took time out to help tackle the plastic pollution crisis by recycling it into facilities.
Project Mumbai, a non-profit that follows a model of 'public, private and people participation' to bring about social transformation, is back with its second edition of Plastic Recyclothon, an initiative which is now bigger and with more citizens involved.Starting this month, citizens, institutions, local communities, schools between Kandivli and Peddar Road and resident apartments between Powai and Goregaon have been volunteering to donate their plastic waste. Wrappers, bags, drums, chairs, brushes, tetra packs and milk pouches are among the items they can give away.
"Renamed Plastic Recyclothon: Ek Baar Phir, 85,000 people donated plastic last year, which we have recycled into benches. These will be installed at civic gardens specifically for senior citizens. This is not just an exercise in behavioural change, but an effort to reduce plastic by recycling it into amenities for the city," explains Shishir Joshi, founder and CEO of Project Mumbai, that is steering the week-long plastic collection and recycling drive.
The benches are made of multi-layer and mono-layer plastic heated together with recycled plastic compound and extruded to make plastic wood planks according to the desired shape and size. "The idea is to make at least a few bench sets and place them in BMC gardens," says Joshi. Their civic-minded innovations will also see plastic morphing into pencils that can be gifted to schoolchildren, garbage bins for housing societies, and t-shirts too. "Students and faculty of JJ School of Arts have come on board to help design the plastic into interesting work," adds Joshi.
The organisers have also invited schoolchildren to create art installations, which they will later dismantle and create amenities for the participating school or college, while certain institutions have been urged to make plastic daanav (monster) as a part of Dussehra activities that will be pulled down after October 8 and recycled too. "Every donor will be gifted a cloth bag in return. The message being, next time you step out, please keep a cloth bag in your car, bike or in your handbag so that you are not forced to carry groceries in a plastic bag," says Joshi.
Those keen on participating can register on www.projectmumbai.org by September 27, for volunteers to collect plastic waste from their doorstep between October 2 and 8.