Utkramit Uchcha Vidyalaya in Khukradih on the outskirts of Jamshedpur, which won the district-level award for Swachh Vidyalaya last year, has now become the first school in East Singhbhum to boast an electrical incinerator for eco-friendly disposal of sanitary napkins.

The incinerator has been installed by CII Indian Women Network and sponsored by RSB Transmissions, Gamharia, as a part of their corporate social responsibility.

Till now, the school had a manually built incinerator for disposal of sanitary napkins.

However, students said it was inconvenient to handle and not used much.

The electric incinerator not only has a burning chamber, but also has an outlet pipe for fume emission. The ash is collected in a tray.

“I am happy with the new incinerator. The manual incinerator wasn’t very convenient and generated a lot of smoke every time we used it. The new incinerator has been installed inside the girls’ toilet, which is very convenient for us,” Class VIII student Puja Mahato said.

The trial run of the new machine was conducted on Monday and it would formally be inaugurated on Tuesday.

The CII Indian Women Network plans to install 10 incinerators in government schools in the current fiscal.

“This is the need of the hour. While we talk a lot about menstrual hygiene and motivate rural girls to use sanitary pads, none tell them the correct way to dispose the used pads. We are trying to approach different companies to fund the installation of such machines and training girls to use them,” a member of CII Indian Women Network said.

Happy Mukherjee, chairperson of CII Indian Women Network, Jharkhand, said the initiative would impact teenage girls by helping them build a habit. “I believe these schoolkids can take this forward to their family and relatives,” she said

Principal Arun Kumar Singh said the school had been focusing on sustainable development for the last one year.

“The school has already won an award for cleanliness management. The electric incinerator is another feather in our cap,” Singh said.

The school, which is an ideal model of waste management and cleanliness, has a water filter, a kitchen garden and rainwater harvesting facility on its campus.