Special Campaign 6: Schools E-Waste Drive on 28 October

The Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL) in the Union Ministry of Education has fixed 28 October 2026 for a countrywide drive in schools to collect electronic waste and to teach children why it has to be handled with care. The drive is part of Special Campaign 6, which the Department is running from 2 to 31 October 2026.

The three strands of Special Campaign 6

The campaign pulls three lines of work together. The first is office discipline: cutting down work left pending, going through files of every category, turning records digital, weeding out papers no longer of use and tightening record keeping, so that files move faster and office space is better used. The second is cleanliness on school campuses. The third is responsible handling of electronic waste. Through all three the Department wants pupils, and the neighbourhoods around their schools, to pick up habits that hold.

Eco Clubs for Mission LiFE lead the school work

In schools the work is led by the Eco Clubs for Mission LiFE. Under them schools across the country have run cleaning drives on their campuses to keep classrooms and grounds hygienic, and have held e-waste awareness and collection drives for pupils and teachers alike. The point is to explain what discarded electronics do to the environment, and to get children to throw away less of it and to route whatever they do discard through authorised channels instead of the nearest scrap dealer.

A mural built from 50 kg of e-waste

To mark International e-Waste Day, which falls on 14 October 2026, the Department put up an e-waste mural and a set of e-waste bins at Kartavya Bhavan 2. School pupils gathered the 50 kg of discarded electronics the mural is built from. The work carries the message Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, and it is in line with the National Education Policy 2020 and with the Eco Clubs for Mission LiFE. The bins give the building a marked place where old electronic items can be dropped, which matters in an office as much as in a school.

How the drive was prepared

The Secretary of the Department, Shri T. K. Anil Kumar, took a video conference with the States and Union Territories and with autonomous bodies on 16 October 2026 to go over the preparations. He briefed those present on what is planned, the information, education and communication campaign among it, and pressed them to settle in advance how the e-waste gathered in schools will be handed on to authorised vendors. That last step decides whether a collection drive ends in safe recycling or in a heap of old equipment nobody will take.