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How can we stop people from using harmful plastic straws while drinking juice?
Meet Rachana, Rishika, Jayavardhini and Sara (Grade 7th)
Team Sippin’ Green, All Rounded Performance Award Winner
Rachana, Rishika, S Jayavardhini and Sara, 12-years old students, noticed that people are given plastic straws almost always while ordering any drinks in cafes and juice shops. They found that these single-use plastic straws are harmful for the environment and when they researched further, they learnt that as many as 8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the world’s oceans.
At an individual level, it seems like a really small thing and probably goes unnoticed. But when you add up these small individual actions, it becomes a big problem.
Idea
After several brainstorming sessions, they decided to start their initiative to convince the cafes and juice shops owners to replace the plastic straws with eco-friendly options like paper straws, and offer them to the customers.
Solution Implemented
To test their idea, they bought a few packets of paper straws from Amazon at Rupee 1 per straw and started going around to cafes and juice shops, trying to sell it to them for the same price, and asking them to offer it to customers instead of plastic straws. However, none of them agreed as they said it would decrease their profit margins.
After considering the feedback they received from cafe and juice shop owners, they came up with a creative solution. This time, they went to the cafes and asked them to buy the paper straws from them at Rupee 1 per straw, but offer it to customers at a price of Rupees 2, making a profit of Rupee 1 with every sale. This idea worked as many customers did not mind spending Rupees 2 extra to do their bit for the environment. To encourage more customers to buy the paper straw, they put up posters around the shop with a message that the power to save the environment is in their hands.
Customers still had a choice to use the free of cost plastic straws, in case they didn't want to pay for the paper straws. But by giving this choice, we hoped that at least the environmentally conscious consumers will pay and use the paper straws.
Impact Created
In a period of 4 months, they have on-boarded 25 cafes and juice shops who are now offering paper straws to their customers as an option. Through their post-intervention study, they found out that on an average, 20% of customers in these shops choose the paper straws, which means around 12,000 less plastic straws are being used every month, already!
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