During the week of 25th September to 2nd October 2010, students of a Municipal School in Pune pledged to make their community plastic bag free. This presentation is a documentation of their efforts. It has also been submitted as an entry for the Design for Change Contest - http://www.designforchangecontest.com
1. ‘ Bags of Paper-Better off Pune’
Our Story of Change
Lt. Smt. Shantabai Ladkat English Medium School,
Pune
2. Step 1: FEEL
We live in a community in
Pune where the use of
plastic bags is rampant
despite a state-wide ban on
them. We have learnt how
harmful plastic is to the
environment. This problem
bothered us a lot.
3. Learning More
Our teacher also
showed us a
documentary on the
damage that plastic
does.
We learned a lot more
about the harmful
effects of plastic
around us.
4. Step 2: IMAGINE
We discussed ideas
with our teacher and
came up with the
following:
A street play/skit to
generate awareness.
Learning how to make
paper bags.
Giving the paper bags
to the shopkeepers in
our community.
OUR CATCHPHRASE
BAGS OF PAPER – BETTER OFF
PUNE!
5. Why Paper Bags?
We wanted to provide people with an
alternative to plastic while telling them how
using plastic harms the environment.
We decided to learn how to make paper
bags so that we could give them to the
shopkeepers in our community who were
still using plastic.
6. STEP 1: Learn how to make paper
bags
STEP 3: SPREAD
Teach women in our community
(self-help groups) how to make
paper bags and facilitate paper bag
sales for them by providing free
paper bag as samples to
shopkeepers.
STEP 3: ADVOCATE
1. Prepare enough sample bags to
give to the shopkeepers in our
community as samples.
2. Stage a skit to generate
awareness.
3. Teaching other school children
how to make paper bags as well.
STEP 4: Convince
shopkeepers to stop giving
plastic bags and start using
paper bags
STEP 2: Make paper bags
7. Step 3: DO
We learnt how to
make paper bags
from our teacher
8. Making paper bags
We got help from
Rotary club in Pune,
who donated us extra
newspapers to help
make our bags.
We prepared different
kinds of bags
according to differing
shopkeepers’ needs.
9. Advocating
We invited parents
and teachers and
staged a skit about
the dangers of using
plastic bags.
10. Advocating
We went around
our community with
the paper bags we
had prepared.
For every paper
bag we gave, we
took 5 plastic bags
from the
shopkeepers.
IMPACT: 500 paper bags given. 2500 Plastic
bags collected.
11. Spreading
We also spread
this around our
community by
teaching women
how to make paper
bags, so that they
could sell them and
earn money.
IMPACT: 500 paper bags given. 2500 Plastic
bags collected.
12. How we were ‘Changed’
We learnt the importance of teamwork and
were grateful for the support we got from
so many places.
Most importantly, we learnt that there is a
solution to all problems and we have the
power to influence things