With Mission To Reduce Waste, Two Delhi Brothers Are Fighting Pollution The Right Way

Two Delhi-based teenage brothers are setting the right example for the Gen Z to act up on the deteriorating environment, pollution and the shaping the future in the right way.

Vihaan Agarwal (17) and his brother Nav Agarwal (14) have a mission to reduce waste pollution and plant more trees in their home city -- New Delhi. This comes at a time when the national capital is gasping for fresh air as AQI has dipped to 'poor' category due to increasing levels of pollution.

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One Step Greener

So, when they realised that the condition of the environment is downgrading year after year, they couldn't help but devise an initiative to do their bit.

One Step Greener, a project that started out in Delhi as a personal attempt to segregate recyclables, has now also expanded to Gurugram. The initiative is about segregating recyclables and organising pickups for trash from thousands of homes.

For this initiative, the brothers have also been awarded the prestigious KidsRights International Children's Peace Prize this year.

Indian Nobel Peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi, a children's rights activist who won the 2014 Nobel jointly with Pakistani education campaigner Malala Yousafzai , presented the brothers with the prize run by the Dutch-based KidsRights foundation at a ceremony in The Hague.

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The award cited their "courage and commitment to tackling pollution in their home city", ranked recently as the worst in the world for air quality due to a toxic mix caused partly by the burning of rubbish.

The brothers said that growing up in Delhi affected the asthmatic Vihaan's health, and curtailed the boys' ability to play outdoors and indulge their love of nature.

When and how did it begin?

But the initiative came after the collapse of the Ghazipur landfill site in 2017, which killed two people and led to a spike in pollution. One third of Delhi's air pollution is caused by burning waste in landfill sites.

"The thought process in our mind was like, our waste shouldn't go there, our waste shouldn't become fodder for this fire," said Vihaan.

The brothers also took inspiration from British naturalist David Attenborough and conservationist Jane Goodall, as well as their grandparents. The brothers began at home, separating recyclables from their rubbish until they had such a mountain of trash that their grandfather told them either they or the waste had to leave.

Reuters

But Vihaan and Nav said they wouldn't pick up such a small quantity, so the boys used a WhatsApp group in their neighbourhood to get enough together to make it worthwhile.

The recycling initiative grew from there.

Starting with 15 homes in 2018, when they were aged 14 and 11, they now have 1,500 homes involved along with offices and schools, fitting the running of the initiative around their school work.

What is their message?

"Our message would be you guys need to act. So many children all around the world are acting," Vihaan told AFP in a remote interview. "Another message would be: don't get in our way."

"To all the young people... you should never fear climate change. You just have to take that one step, and when you do it's just amazing the amount of change you as a one person can actually create," Nav said.

¡°Our thought process is that we need to get the whole world zero waste. And that means not only India, not only going to every single city, every town, every village, but to actually share this message with the whole world,¡± Vihaan said.

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The brothers said winning the KidsRights prize, which brings with it a grant for their education and 100,000 euros for their project, was an "amazing honour" that they hoped would inspire others.

The initiative operates in Delhi and a neighbouring city with plans to expand to Kolkata, while there has also been international interest. They are also educating people in India about recycling, reaching an estimated 50,000 young people through social media as well as a curriculum in English and Hindi.

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