Council on Energy, Environment and Water Integrated | International | Independent
A bright tenth grader tells us that waste management is a mindset as we visit his school in Alinagar. “And if schools across India really lean into that, we could fix way more than just trash," he says.
Just like any other bulk waste generator, schools across India also generate a significant amount of waste, including discarded notebooks, food scraps from cafeterias, plastic wrappers and stationary, sanitary waste from washrooms. Along with malls and hospitals, large urban schools with over 1,000 students often generate 100 kg of waste every day. It is estimated that each student generates ~100 g of waste per day. This means that in Punjab alone, 27,700 schools with 62 lakh students should be generating approximately 6,20,000 kg (620 tonnes) of waste.
Without structured waste management, much of this waste—especially avoidable single-use plastics and organic waste—ends up in landfills or is burned, worsening environmental and health risks. With India’s Draft Solid Waste Management Rules, 2024 set to take effect in October 2025, schools have a crucial window to rethink waste management and drive systemic change in shaping responsible citizens of the future.
That’s where the Zero Waste Schools Programme comes in. Launched in 2024, this initiative–developed by Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) in collaboration with the municipal corporations of Amritsar and Ludhiana—was designed to help schools pilot ways to rethink waste, not just manage it. Over the past year, students, teachers, and staff from 20 schools (both government and private) have been rolling up their sleeves to track their waste, change habits, and experiment with practical solutions. The goal? To build a scalable, adaptable model that any school can use to reduce its waste footprint—one that goes beyond rules and checklists and actually sticks.
[L-R] CEEW in partnership with the municipalities of Ludhiana and Amritsar respectively launched the Zero Waste Schools Programme in 2024
Schools are uniquely positioned to drive this shift. This blog presents a three-step framework—Align and Assess, Build Capacity and Behave, and Check and Continue—that schools can adopt to systematically reduce waste, improve waste segregation, and embed sustainable habits within the school community.
The journey towards zero waste begins by aligning key stakeholders, including teachers, students, cleaning staff, and the local municipality. This process involves assessing the school’s current waste management practices and conducting waste audits. A waste audit is a formal, structured process used to quantify the amount and types of waste being generated by an organisation. By bringing together a diverse group, each with common but differentiated responsibilities, we ensured that every actor involved in managing school waste was considered. Understanding students' existing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour helps design targeted interventions for each school.
[L-R] Students undertaking the baseline KAP survey;
Teachers, municipal officials, and the CEEW team discuss the Zero Waste Schools Programme implementation strategy in Ludhiana, Punjab
A knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) survey conducted with over 850 students across regional and English-medium participating schools (classes 6–9) in Ludhiana and Amritsar revealed significant awareness gaps and barriers to practising better waste management. For instance:
The insights from the KAP survey and the waste audits highlighted a critical gap in knowledge. Information from audits help assess and analyse current waste practices and how they can be improved. Designed in response to these gaps, the following step aims to directly address the root causes of improper waste management by designing behavioural interventions.
Baseline data from the waste audit and survey helped us shape interventions tailored to each school’s waste profile. We organised hands-on waste audit demonstrations, where students learned to:
Knowledge alone does not drive action. Institutionalising sustainable waste management practices through behaviour change is key. The Zero Waste Schools Programme thus focuses on motivating students to bridge intentions into action, making waste management easy, attractive, social, and timely.
Capacity-building sessions helped us target misconceptions about waste through:
Encouraging peer influence is crucial in segregation and reduction initiatives: 58 per cent of students in our survey noted that their classmates are cooperative when it comes to managing waste inside the classrooms together. By leveraging social norms, schools can turn waste segregation and reduction into shared, enjoyable goals.
CEEW team conducting demo waste audit workshop with students in Amritsar, Punjab
Achieving zero waste is a continuous process. Beyond the initial waste audits and behaviour change interventions, our programme focuses on the importance of regular monitoring and feedback.
Students showcasing classroom projects on waste segregation tackling the existing knowledge gaps during a demo waste audit workshop in Ludhiana, Punjab
These include:
Schools that are not yet part of the Zero Waste Schools Programme can still take meaningful steps toward sustainability by implementing simple, structured actions.
The strategies outlined here empower students to take ownership of their environment, build lifelong eco-friendly habits, and drive systemic change—one school at a time.
Arvind Kumar is a Research analyst, and Shailja Singla and Divyanshu Saini are Consultants at the Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW). Send your comments to [email protected].
