A 17-year-old student from Sishya, Adyar, and her mother have been vociferous about the need to curb plastics and have been distributing paper bags to shopkeepers around the locality of RA Puram and Besant Nagar to make people more aware about the need to shift to using biodegradable bags.
Speaking to News Today, Bindu Menon, the mother of Nidhi Menon, said, “My daughter and I have been doing this activity for quite a while now. In fact, it was I, who, during my college days started an activity to raise awareness among people to stop littering in the city as a group and I also raised my daughter in a similar way and now we are taking the usage of paper bags forward.”
She, however, says that it was her daughter who made it reach a much bigger scale. “She was chosen as the head girl of the school last year and after attending a leadership session in which it was told that one must leave behind something for others to follow, she immediately started the activity of asking her schoolmates to avoid using plastic.”
According to Nidhi, she launched For Earth’s Sake, her initiative, in June and started giving paper bags to her peers. Soon, with the support of her school, it grew and she was successful in making her school canteen go green as they avoided using plastics and also spread the message of source segregation as well.
Bindhu, however, says that they started to make their own cloth bags a few years ago. “Our housemaid is a good tailor and we started sourcing materials from Pantheon Road and asked her to stitch the bags. We then gave it to the shopkeepers asking them not to give it to the customers by charging them.”
But soon they came to know that Vaer, an organic store in RA Puram, makes paper bags and started buying it from them. “Nidhi soon said she will get the bags out of her own pocket money. We need society to realise the ill-effects of using plastic.”
Nidhi is aspiring to study Marine Biology abroad and the mother-daughter duo hopes to carry on with the mission.
Bindu Menon can be contacted at 98406 65823.