Wealth Out-of Waste (WOW)

ITC’s WOW initiative is not only creating awareness among the public about the advantages of the ‘Reduce-Reuse-Recycle’ process, protecting the environment, improving civic amenities, public health and hygiene and generating employment, but also generating cost-effective raw material for the paper, plastics, metal and glass industries.

The WOW initiative has now been extended to Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Khammam District in Andhra Pradesh and Kovai District in Tamil Nadu. What started in a small way with households has now spread to schools, government offices, Corporates and other institutions.

To emphasise the importance of source segregation, ITC provides special bags to accumulate dry waste like paper, plastic and metals and arranges periodic collection through outsourced agencies. The waste paper is used by ITC for manufacture of paperboards and the other materials are sold to the recycling industries. Segregated dry waste can save almost 40% of municipal garbage handling costs, which can be utilised to improve civic amenities.

In 2008-09 the total waste paper collected by ITC through this initiative was 6000 tonnes, an increase of 12 times over the previous year.