Environmentalist turns discarded milk packets into seedling bags

Hyderabad-based environmentalist Ram Arora has collected, cleaned, and dried more than a thousand milk packets and converted them into seedling bags

Hyderabad: Did you know that more than a third of the branded plastic waste that goes into the garbage every day from households could be just milk packets? Rarely picked by rag pickers because of the low resale value, milk packets often end up in clogging drains, floating in rivers, or rotting in landfills.

Wanting to do something about this growing menace of plastic overconsumption and mismanagement of plastic waste, Hyderabad-based environmentalist Ram Arora has collected, cleaned, and dried more than a thousand milk packets and converted them into seedling bags.

Collecting milk packets from almost all the flats in his apartment and asking his neighbours to turn over, clean, and dry the packets once they empty the milk from it was his daily routine. Explaining why he chose to do it, Ram says, “I have been actively volunteering at Neknampur Lake for the past one year. I saw every person contributing to the environment somehow or other. I was inspired and then came with the idea to reuse milk packets for growing saplings.”

These seedlings bags made of milk packets are now going to be used to grow medicinal plant saplings, which will be distributed on August 15 for free as part of a community event at Neknampur Lake or Ibrahim Cheruvu that NGO Dhruvansh is organising.

“We will grow more saplings and distribute saplings for free to all the people who visit the lake on Independence Day and participate in activities like growing saplings, reciting freedom fighter stories, and sharing their eco-friendly lifestyle experiences,” he adds, revealing that the idea is to involve people to sustain the environment and understand judicious use of resources rather destroying it for personal need and greed.

Most of the items are being delivered in single-use plastic bags ever since the pandemic started owing to safety. Ram collected all those, washed and dried them, and reused them for growing saplings.

For those who buy packet milk and for those who are not doing this yet, do not snip off and throw away the corners of milk packets. These small pieces cannot be collected or recycled but end up blocking drainage or going to nearby water bodies or landfills, says Ram.

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