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Teenagers Aditya & Daksh share their experience of launching "Green Sense" to tackle air pollution
ICO: Hi Aditya & Daksh, hope you are doing good. We’re looking forward to hearing your story of launching your initiative “Green Sense”.
Aditya: Our pleasure. We are really excited to share our changemaker experience.
Great, so tell us how did it all start?
Daksh: Well, we always wanted to start something to contribute to the society, but we didn’t really know how we could go about it. So when we came to know about ICO through a friend, we immediately knew this is going to be great platform for us to start an initiative.
So we participated in ICO, and then, during Diwali time, I read in the newspaper about the recent air pollution levels in Delhi and how horrible the situation was. Living in a similar big city like Bangalore, we decided we should do our part to solve this problem. So we took this issue up and started our initiative called “Green Sense” to tackle it.
We always wanted to start something to contribute to the society, so when we came to know about ICO, we knew this is going to be a great platform for us.
It’s great to see you guys take the problem seriously. What was your action plan?
Aditya: After coming up with the problem statement, we researched on the internet and came to know about these special plants called “Snake Plants” and its benefits. So Snake plants are indoor plants that actually release oxygen even at night and help in cleaning the air inside the house. So we thought that we can we give this plant to households and workplaces around us. We started by planting these snake plants into pots. We found some good quality pots, put soil in it and then put the snake plant cuttings in it. Once the plant was ready, we then sold it to people in our community.
Great! That’s a very simple but effective solution. So did you face any challenges while implementing the idea?
Daksh: The cost price of assembling the plants was Rs. 100, and we were selling at the same price. We did face a challenge in the beginning as we were not able to convince people properly about the importance of keeping the air clean. Hence, people were not buying the plants. But eventually we found a couple of solutions to it. For instance, we made posters for explanation purposes that contained statistics from credible sources about the importance of these plants. This worked and more people started buying it.
Nice strategy. So how many pots were you able to sell in total?
Aditya: Till now, we have been able to sell around 70 pots to people, which has resulted in an increase of 11,560 liters of oxygen per month. We also put up a stall during the Parents Teacher Meet in our school and sold around 35 pots in one go. Parents were very happy to see this innovative plant and appreciated our efforts.
That’s really commendable. So what were your key learning from this journey?
Daksh: It was a great learning experience for us. This initiative helped us in improving our pitching skills. We learned how to negotiate with people and the importance of the presentation of the idea while you are selling to people.
That’s good. So what according to you was the best part of your initiative?
Aditya: The best part of our initiative was the feeling that we are able to create positive impact in our surroundings at a young age. The process of being able to pitch and sell plants to people was a confidence booster personally.
The ICO experience has given us the confidence that we can take up any problem and find its solution.
I’m sure it must have been. So can you tell more more about what impact did this experience have on you?
Daksh: I think the biggest impact was that it helped us develop an action-oriented mindset and made us understand that it is not just enough to know about problems, but we all need to act upon them and do our bit. This experience gave us the confidence that we can take up any problem and find its solution. In fact, 6 months after we started this initiative, we have recently undertaken another initiative to reduce the amount of E-waste that is being generated in our locality.
Well, thats great. Keep up the changemaker spirit and thanks for chatting with us. Our readers are going to enjoy it for sure!
Both: You’re welcome and thanks for having us.
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