Schools do their bit by recycling water

Many schools across the City are doing their bit to conserve water by recycling and reu­sing the precious resource.

Take the Government Higher Primary School in Muthur for example. On a daily basis, the school uses around 120 litres of water, out of which, it recycles and saves 70 to 80 litres through a grey water harvesting (GWH) system. The recycled water is usually used to water the school garden.

The GWH is connected to a 200-litre tank which collects the water to be recycled. Davood Pasha, an English teacher at the government school, who is in charge of the GWH system, said: “All the 72 students  use the sink to wash their plates after their midday meals. This water gets collected in the tub. The school  wants to also use this recycled water for other purposes like flushing and cleaning toilets.”

With water scarcity becoming a problem, many other schools in and around the City are embracing this system. The Gear Innovative International School on Sarjapur Road is one such school. Pooja Abhijit Bhide, a class 8 student of the school, who has been a part of a similar GWH initiative, said: “Pipes are connected to our canteen sinks and the waste water from here is used for drip irrigation in the school garden.”The school has managed to recycle and save 30,000 litres every year.

Subhita Pathiyeri, physics teacher and co-coordinator of the project, said: “As many as 30 students from grade 5 to 8 are involved in the project as part of their extracurricular activities after school,” she said.

Besides the GWH system, the Sri Kumaran’s Children Home in Mallasandra has also installed restrictors in taps to limit the flow of water. “In one school block alone, we have installed restrictors in around 28 taps. The same has been set up in other blocks, too,” said Jayanthi Sridhar, a teacher at the school. The school has set up a mobile GWH system that also saves around 30,000 litres of water every year.

A GWH has also been set up at the Government School at Vajrahalli. Reap Benefit, a social enterprise, has supported this initiative.