In efforts to reduce producing wastes and dedicating at least an hour to collecting them, the National Environment Commission (NEC) kick-started it’s Zero Waste Hour in the capital today. Led by the Prime Minister, more than 150 people from various governmental agencies, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and volunteers took part in the cleaning campaign and collected over a hundred sacks of wastes.
The Zero Waste Hour was launched by Her Majesty The Gyaltsuen last month.
Zero Waste Hour is an awareness programme to change the mindset of people to take responsibility for waste and inculcate civic responsibility. Observing an hour on the second day of every month, Zero Waste Hour encourages offices, institutions to clean their surrounding areas, making it a waste-free environment. The programme is one of the strategies to achieve Zero Waste Society by 2030.
“The main reason for initiating Zero Waste Hour was to instil behavioural change towards proper waste management system. Because in our country one of the challenges we face in terms of environment is with illegal dumping of wastes and improper waste management issues,” Ugyen Tshomo, the Assistant Environment Officer of NEC, said.
Taking forward the initiative, the ministries, dzongkhags, thromdes, relevant agencies and institutions and communities will identify focal persons who will coordinate the Zero Waste Hour every month and collect data.
NEC as the overall coordinator will monitor the implementation by collecting the data which will then be submitted to Her Majesty’s Secretariat annually.
