Posted on by Mugdha Lele

WasteLess

Venture Center team at Wasteless Office in Auroville

WasteLess is non-profit social enterprise based at Auroville which designs waste related educational materials for school students. Started in 2011 by Ribhu and Chandrah, WasteLess emerged from their passion toward waste management. In 2009, they organized a ‘Litter Free Auroville Campaign’ which was attended by more than 2000 people. It was after this, that they realized that behavioural change is a massive barrier towards waste management practices.

Their approach towards waste management is being explained by Ribhu in the video below. He states that “according to behavioural psychologists if you do something for 4-6 months it becomes habitual, something unconscious. For example, brushing your teeth before going to bed”. This is what they wish to do with Wasteless, that is to bring a change behaviour in people. For this, they have started with the school students and have developed innovative educational games.

WasteLess 50:50 Strategy to Waste Management

We’ve developed a 50:50 #strategy in our work on #education for #sustainable #waste #management.
Check out our approach to #closethetap & #inspire the next #generation to mop better.
This is part of a longer video message addressing the #amazing Plant-for-the-Planet youth summit
Watch the full video :
https://goo.gl/9Nu9X0
Thank you Martin Autour du Monde for making this for us!

Posted by WasteLess on Thursday, December 29, 2016

In 2012, they launched their waste education board game called Garbology 101. The board game consists of 6 different themes and 101 activities on waste, resource conservation, avoidance & reduction, conscious consumerism, system change and whole school activity. At present, the toolkit is being used in 50 schools across the country.
In 2017, they came up with Garbology lite, consisting of fun and interactive activities which are free to download.
Source: http://wastelessindia.org/garbology-lite/garbology-lite/

Amidst the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and multitudes of awareness campaigns, WasteLess hits right at the spot by reaching out to the kids. What is being taught at the school prepare the kids for the future. Waste education so far has been little or untouched in the curriculum. The ideology of WasteLess has a potential to create an enormous ripple effect and change the way we deal with the waste we generate.

About the Author: Shubham Singh is presently working as the BIRAC Social Innovator at Venture Center, Pune.