Forgo Plastic: 16-Year-Old From Pune Makes And Distributes Paper Bags To Stop The Usage Of Plastic
Shikha Chaurasia
Pune, January 11, 2021: As we all know, plastic is one of the biggest environmental hazards which takes up to thousands of years to decompose in landfills. In the early 2000s, our output of plastic waste rose more in a single decade than it had in the previous 40 years. Today, we produce about 300 million tonnes of plastic waste every year.
In a scenario like this, some people amongst us are working really hard to put a stop on the use of plastic. Tanish Singh (16) from Mansukbhai Kothari National School, Pune is a dedicated environmentalist. He started his own community known as ‘Forgo Plastic’ on 18 December 2019. Till date, Tanish has distributed around 4,500 newspaper bags to local vendors and shopkeepers.
In an interview with the Punekarnews.in he said, “I believe that the world’s biggest challenge is to overcome climate change and plastic pollution is one of the reasons. It is killing marine life, polluting beaches and poisoning human diets. Hence, with Forgo Plastic, I aim to educate the vendors about the menace caused due to plastic pollution. I also tell the vendors to encourage their customers to carry cloth or paper bags with them.”
Tanish said that he often saw his mother (Jyotsna Singh) carrying a cloth bag and telling the shopkeepers to stop using plastic, this encouraged him to start this initiative. He started making paper bags from old newspapers and magazines along with his younger brother. He said that they kept a weekly target of about 200-300 paper bags and went on to distribute them during the weekend. “I distributed paper bags free of cost in NIBM area and Salunke Vihar. The response which I got from vendors was very positive and welcoming.”
Regarding his plans for the future, he said, “I am a member at the New York Academy of Sciences and my goal is to scale-up my operations by researching on upcycling plastics to create an impact on the society on the environment and economic front.”
Tanish admires and respects Ripu Daman Bevli also known as the Plogman of India. He said that he was inspired to work for the same cause after he got to know about Ripu’s work.
He said that in today’s time, it is extremely important to urge people to take environmental issues seriously. “Everybody should contribute their bit because I believe the time for implementing such ideas has come. Overcoming climate change is our biggest challenge”, he added further.
