Want a free mobile recharge? Crush your plastic bottles at railway stations

Indian Railways has started a program wherein passengers can recharge their prepaid mobiles for free, if they crush their water bottles at railway stations. This is a big and interesting program to stop plastic pollution at railway stations,
and perfectly aligns with PM Modi’s anti-pollution and Swacch Bharat initiative.

Free Mobile Recharge By Crushing Water Bottles:

Indian Railways has installed bottle crushers at several Railway Stations across India.

The process is simple:

• The passenger goes to the bottle crusher machine, and enters his prepaid mobile number
• Then he crushes the water bottles
• Based on the number of water bottles, the machine will automatically recharge the prepaid mobile number with a pre-designated amount
• As of now, we don’t have the exact information as to how value would be the mobile recharge, based on the number of water bottles crushed.

Plastic Bottle Crushers :-

As of now, there are 160 bottle crushing machines installed at 128 Railway Stations across India. Very soon, 400 more such bottle crushing machines will be installed across more railway stations.

Since the water bottles sold use single-use plastic, this new program will encourage more and more passengers to crush the water bottles, and in return their mobiles will be recharges seamlessly.

A win-win situation.

As per a 2018 report, Indian Railways has pledged to install such bottle crushing machines across 2000 Railway Stations. All 16 zones and 70 divisions have been instructed to install such machines at their respective railway stations.

Drive Against Single-Use Plastics Intensifies

More than 6000 tonnes of plastic is deposited across Railway Stations and trains, in a year, which is proving to be a huge menace.

This is the reason that Indian Railways has completely banned usage of single-plastic across all railway stations and trains after October 2nd. In fact, such single-use plastic can be banned across India after October 2nd. 

By launching this scheme of getting free mobile recharge by crushing water bottles, Indian Railways has once again proved that they are indeed serious about eradicating plastics across their premises.