Always put your waste into a suitable bin. If there are no waste bins available keep the waste with you till you find a bin. Never litter.

Separate your waste as biodegradable and non-biodegradable, if designated containers are available.

Further, separate your non-biodegradable waste as plastics and polythene, paper, glass and metal if designated bins are available for those items.

Try to start separating waste at your temple, church or at community halls etc. This will inspire others to separate waste.

A success story at Vipassana meditation center

Vipassana meditation center is a Buddhist temple situated in the heart of Colombo. Hundreds of devotees come for meditation daily and on poya days, this number increases up to more than thousand sil observers.

There is a huge amount of mixed garbage gets collected daily in the temple premises. There was an issue on disposing residual food and other stuff, especially on poya days. As a solution, we started source separation with the assistance of Girl Guide troops of Museus Girls College.

First, we arranged bins and basins according to national color code for separating waste. We Hung up special banners and posters in the temple premises to inform the devotees of the new movement. Five sets of concrete compost bins were placed in a corner of the garden for composting biodegradable food waste. Poya day of July, we made the first attempt to make the sil observers separate their food waste after breakfast and lunch. It was not so easy at the beginning.

After separating bio degradable portion of waste   was transferred to the compost bins and the rest was given as animal feed. Non bio degradable items were given to Colombo Municipal Council’s Eco kiosk center a recyclable collecting.

We continued the programme for four poya days with different strategies like distributing leaflets, changing the set up of queues, changing labeling of bins, setting up a ‘Jeewa Kotuwa’ for garden waste and displaying different types of posters and banners.

With time, we could see a remarkable improvement in behavior. At start, we had to assist them each time telling what to do after having their meals. We had to take the remaining from them and separate in to food, polythene, yoghurt cups and paper. Now they have got used to the new procedure and color codes of the bins so they separate waste by themselves with very little assistance.