A school in India came up with a brilliant idea to combat the plastic problem. A brand can mitigate plastic waste by using sustainable packaging.

We constantly hear about the problem created by our plastic use. According to Earthday.org, globally we use 2 million single-use plastic bags every minute and half a billion plastic straws every day. THIS. IS. TOO. MUCH. PLASTIC. We use plastic in different forms, whether it be a plastic bag for shopping, plastic straw at a restaurant, or plastic cups at a party. There is no doubt that this daily use of plastic creates massive plastic waste.

A school in India came up with a brilliant idea to combat this problem: asking parents to pay their children’s school fees with plastic waste.

Akshar Foundation School is supported by donations but every week it requests each child to bring in at least 25 items of plastic fees to encourage a sense of community ownership.  The school located in Assam was founded by Parmita Sarma and Mazin Mukhtar in 2016. The idea to have students bring in plastic waste instead of fees occurred when their classrooms filled with toxic fumes from people nearby burning plastic waste to keep warm during the winter, without the knowledge of the serious health and environmental harm.

Sharma and Mukhtar want to transform public schools in India… they are determined to bring positive changes through education. When they first opened the school, “... most parents sent their kids to work in nearby stone quarries instead of to school where they would make the equivalent of about $2.50 per day.” With their focused curriculum, their goal is to, “… support teenagers through school and into college or an apprenticeship.” They have attracted more children to attend school and have taken their approach to the capital of Delhi, helping turn around an under-performing school in just six months. Sharma and Mukhtar plan to open 100 similar schools in the next 5 years.

The school focuses on building skills for students that they can use when they are older. Students themselves are taught to build their teaching skills which they can use to get a job as teaching assistants. Their curriculum, “… combines carpentry with mathematics, solar technology with physics, embroidery with economics, teaching with psychology, recycling with ecology, landscaping with biology, etc.”. The school with the help of staff and students also runs an animal shelter, rescuing and treating injured or abandoned dogs before finding them homes locally.  The best alternative to plastic bags is organic cotton is reusable cotton tote bags made from organically grown cotton fabric.

You can learn more about the Akshar Foundation and how you can help here:

https://www.aksharfoundation.org/