Berhampur: The teachers and students of ITI at Berhampur in Odish’s Ganjam district created a huge structure of elephant with more than 35,000 used plastic bottles and put it on display in the campus on Sunday.
In order to create the structure, around 100 teachers and 3,000 students of the state government run Industrial Training Institute (ITI) collected the empty plastic bottles throw by people after use in the city and its nearby areas during the last 10 days, said principal Rajat Kumar Panigrahi.
The bottles were kept inside an elephant-like frame made with 1400 sq ft insulated iron net joined with 325 kg scrap iron rod. The structure is 23 ft in height and 25 ft in width and weighs more than 1300 kg. “We also designed it subsequently to shoulder the burden of all materials including the plastic bottles,” Panigrahi said.
The waste plastic bottle elephant is part of the ‘Swachhata Hi Seva’ (SHS) campaign being observed from September 15 to October 2 as part of ‘Garbage Free India’. Besides, the teachers and students participated in 1-hour ‘Shramdaan for Swachhata’ on Sunday on the call of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“We formed 100 teams led by the faculty members with about 25 students in each team to collect the used plastic water bottles from various corners of Berhampur during the last 10 days. It was a team work and a gift to the Prime Minister from the ITI institutions throughout the country,” said the principal.
“The collection of plastic bottles from roadside also shows the institution’s concern for environment. Plastic causes great damage to the planet. Out of 6 plastic water bottles, only one makes it to the recycling bin. The rest five are sent to landfills or used as trash on the land and in rivers, lakes and the ocean,” he added.
According to a survey, 8 million ton of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every 12 months. A whopping 300 million ton of plastic waste is produced each year around the world and 1,500 plastic bottles are thrown away every second.
Ramesh Chandra Chau Patnaik, president of BJD’s Ganjam unit; Gopabandhu Das, former bureaucrat and political secretary to Chief minister Naveen Patnaik; Bikram Panda, Berhampur MLA; Sanghamitra Dalei, Berhampur mayor and Subash Maharana, Chairman of Odisha Cashew Development Corporation unveiled the elephant structure.
