Through the way of being first ever Zero Plastic University in Sri Lanka

We always used to say that Sri Lanka is the pearl of the Indian ocean but how could someone believe that the so-called little pearl has ranked as the 5th in the list of countries that release polythene and plastic waste to the ocean? literally, that's the truth !!! The saddest part is we reached this rank without even being one of the biggest consumers of plastic in the world. Simply it means 5 million kg of plastic and polythene wastage per day in our country mostly happens because of the dim view and wrong consumption patterns of the citizens in Sri Lanka.

The situation as it stands today is worse than we ever thought, we Rotaract Club of Uva Wellassa University- Badulla come up with the idea to convert our university into plastic-free premises collaborate with zero plastic.lk. Our ultimate goal is to transform Uva Wellassa University into a model university for the zero plastic university concept while conveying this message to the local community as well.

When talking about the zero plastic concept, the idea given by the name itself is not an unfamiliar thing to us. Every nation, environmental organizations, institutes and societies trying to aware people on this global issue but still we cannot see any significant reduction in plastic use. Here in the zero plastic concept we mainly turn our attention to the 3R concept and shift to plastic alternative products.

More than 350 enthusiastic volunteer undergraduates join hands with us through the way of being the first-ever government university in Sri Lanka which is going to undertake the concept of zero plastic into action. At the very first stage, we identified that changing the attitudes of the students on plastic and polythene consumption is a must for the sustainability of the project. Accordingly, we are conducting weekly awareness sessions on different aspects of environmental pollution as well as a social media PR campaign to convey the message more clear to the audience. Moreover, we encourage every undergraduate who coming to the university as freshers, avoid bringing plastic or polythene base products to the university premises also mention the ongoing project in their admission to make the awareness beforehand.

Further, we have arranged different segregation bins to collect the plastic waste according to their monomer type. Until we construct the recycling plant within the university, for now, we send that collected plastic to the DNP Eco polythene recycle centre. Afterwards, they convert that segregated plastic into their monomer type and send it to vendees to manufacture new products.

Someone rightly said, "The ladder of success has a lot of tiny steps". With that, we start replacing at least one item that is used by each target group while highlighting the true sense of changing it. Meanwhile, we are providing a platform for our own undergraduates who produce eco-friendly products and running their own businesses by collaborating with zero plastic.lk, so thereby these young entrepreneurs could step into the marketplace with more confidence. We

have a number of undergraduates who are running businesses align with the zero plastic concept and we always give priority to our own ones when we go for replacing the plastic with eco- friendly products.

As we trying hard to make a change for the sake of our nation for the sake of the whole world, you also have the equal responsibility to end this plastic plague. We see that plastic is a non- biodegradable material. It does not leave the face of the Earth. We cannot dissolve plastic in land or water, it remains forever. Thus, more and more use of plastic means more plastic that won't get dissolved. Therefore move on from plastic and polythene, always try to change the attitudes of the people, educate little children from their childhood to love the planet they live and that's the best way out from this global issue and make Sri Lanka a pure pearl in the Indian Ocean.

Penned by Rtr. Shashini Amanda