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Author: Ganakshi Gehlot
On 24th October 2021, we had our first invite-only online eco-summit for the youth below 23.
We formed a small community of youth with an already existing eco-business or eco-idea.
Vijay Sankaran facilitated our sharing circle; he truly brought out the essence of the event, making the transitions between participants smooth and efficient through innovative ideas. His crisp analysis for each participant enabled us to think and absorb the ideas thoroughly and efficiently.
Intriguing Mushrooms!
We learned from our participant Brian Britto about mushroom cultivation and the necessity of labor automation and how mushroom cultivation interweaves many environmental issues like agricultural waste, pollution, ecosystem balance, nutrition and health. He brought certain hidden aspects like poisonous mushrooms, mushroom taboo related to Psilocybin mushrooms into perspective.
Our co-founder Navitha Varsha raised essential questions like how adopting global food could be challenging for the entire system—making us reflect on the environmental impact, decentralized system, scaling strategies and closed-loop design in mushroom cultivation.
Caring about E-waste
We had Shivani Puttabakula speak up about e-waste management. Inspired by her father, she started her journey with e-waste.
She believes in creating awareness through various means like events or workshops. Having collection centers at different points in the city through collaboration with e-commerce could be a promising start aiming to recycle more and most of the e-waste.
Navitha helped us understand digital pollution, screen usage, minimizing electronic use to impact e-waste production.
Is Resin Crafting Sustainable?
From Glancia S D’Souza we learned about the dismissive behaviors when working with resins and how the toxicity impacts the lives of various workers. We discussed the possibilities of using natural and synthetic resins and collectively reflected on using sustainable resin alternatives.
Sudhanva’s design thinking rounds enabled us to understand the importance of time and how our ideas were more detailed with increasing the time for each round. It was insightful learning on consistency, repetitive actions and habits. Habits that then become our lifestyle and the identity attached with it can impact our businesses positively. Provoking our thinking through fictional video was immersive learning helping us reflect on the importance of our emotions and the lifestyle being an integral part of starting any business.
Yathaarth’s K-talk was an inspiration for all of us though his work on reviving the lake, empowering children through edit earth and his participation in the UN Sustainable Development Goals merely at such a young age. His contribution towards environment and interests in sustainability taught us the importance of inculcating responsible citizenship among children.
Because the youth today will determine our country and the planet tomorrow.
The event successfully brought together youth in the sustainability space, engaging in interdisciplinary learning through the design thinking round and sharing circle.
The event helped reflect on specific environmental facts like the number of microplastics that are released through a teabag and how our ocean is filled with plastic straws through a quiz designed by Alistair and Ganakshi.
The event was entirely online and ZERO-WASTE as no special chart papers or tools were required. We had sustainable businesses like RESCRIPT sponsor us, helping us share sustainable stationery kits with our participants and our K-Talk collaborator.
We look forward to enabling and empowering the creation and sustenance of communities across India.
Meet our collaborators from ECOnomic 2021