India, Aug. 20 -- The Supreme Court has directed education departments across the country to integrate theoretical and practical solid waste management knowledge to train students, underlining that the responsibility to keep the environment clean is not the duty of sanitation workers alone but of every citizen.

"The trained students would function as household-level supervisors. An educated child is the most effective and least coercive instrument for educating a parent or a relative for the implementation of Solid Waste Management (SWM)," said a bench of Justices SVN Bhatti and NV Anjaria on Tuesday. It also called for training teachers as trainers.

The court was dealing with a matter concerning enforcement of the SWM Rules, 2026. It c...