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Paper Power

Vital Stats

Nishita A

Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu

people helped10
People Doing It50

The Problem

Being a student, I am well aware of the fact as to how much paper is wasted in our school every day and how many trees are cut for the production of a single notebook. Also, the figures are all known to us. It has been found that every year, around 16 million hectares of forest cover becomes a victim of the axe. Out of this, about 5 million hectares of forest are cut down, solely for paper production. This problem, in our opinion, concerns everyone who uses paper. This environmental concern is affecting every habitant of the Earth directly or indirectly. When we spoke to people, most of the opinions pointed out in one direction: ignorance.

Plan of Action

The problem was known to us. Now was the time to Act and so we did. We initiated a project in our school called ‘Paper Power’ which is dedicated to the cause of recycling paper. We supply the recyclable paper from our school to a nearby Polio Home where kids suffering from Polio and Cerebral Palsy are taught. We help these kids by contributing towards the cost of their medical treatment by selling creative and useful things made out of this paper. Additionally, we designed a logo for the project and made huge boxes ourselves (including the carpentry work) and painted the paper power logo on them, after which we placed them in different parts of our school in order for people to put all the recyclable paper in it. While working with this project, I have also realised that to ensure sustainability we need to keep innovating and hence we are also starting the ‘Papier-Mâché’ project in which are making furniture with papier-mâché and supplying it to the nearby schools which cannot afford it, in order to help students experience a better learning atmosphere!