The Clean Lab – Student Solutions for a Clean India

The students from the Arsha Vidya Mandir School in Chennai are hosting an annual day with a twist. They want to turn the tables and teach their parents how to clean up their act by managing waste sustainably.

Two years ago the forward thinking school introduced a subject called Garbology 101 into the curriculum for classes 1 to 8. Through this subject the students have understood the principles of sustainable waste management and learnt to segregate waste at source into 8 different categories. Older students of classes 9-12 regularly visit a farm where they learn about organic farming and recycling biodegradable waste into nutrient rich compost.

Armed with this important knowledge, the students wanted to create an engaging campaign to teach others how to manage waste better. Mentored by the WasteLess team from Auroville, 62 student groups have created unique educational projects. The first part of the campaign is to open the schools doors and invite parents, other school students NGO’s and some others in the field to a wonderful celebration of learning at the school. In the future, a selection of projects will be hosted online to inspire other young minds across the world to search for solutions into our global challenge with waste management.

Waste and its management in India is an aspect of our society which is usually dominated with bad news about our collective inability to manage waste better. This campaign offers to show this aspect in a more positive light. The future generations offers hope and opportunity to the world of waste and are ready to demonstrate with their actions that a Clean India is closer than we think. Please help us by sharing the positive stories that you can derive by observing our students projects and interacting with them too.