LAHORE: As Pakistanis continue to face wide-ranging repercussions of worsening climate change, Punjab has introduced various initiatives and policies to mitigate the issue with provincial government’s Green Credit Programme being one such measure in this regard as well.
The programme is aimed at laying a foundation for an emission trading system in Punjab and mobilising youth, students, females, and the broader community to carry out positive environmental action.
As part of the initiative, the government has signed an agreement with a private company to recycle single-use plastic which will install locally manufactured machines with the help of Chinese technology in four major universities in Lahore next month. Such machines will further also be installed in the city’s markets as well.
This machine consists of two boxes and are easy to use where citizens can simply press button A, insert a plastic bottle, enter their phone number and press button B. Once they have done this, green credits will appear on the machine’s screen, which can also be viewed with the help of the mobile application
As per the private company’s Chairman Gulfam Abid, 500 tonnes of plastic bottle waste is generated daily and these machines will ensure that plastic bottles and single-use plastic utensils are recycled which will then be used to make sidewalks, bricks and patchwork of roads.
Abid further highlighted that by putting 20 one-and-a-half-litre bottles, and 40 half-litre bottles in the machine, people will be able to get as much as Rs 1,000 in cash.
Not only ordinary citizens but also 18,000 junkyards of Lahore will be able to benefit from the green credits, he added, noting that they could reach out via the mobile application and the company itself would collect bottles from them.
