Passing by a dusty lane near my school, I stumbled upon a pen; old, laden with dust, lying near a heap of garbage, pen shouting for help and taunting the passers-by. I stopped and paused for a moment before I spoke something and then when I was about to ask the pen some questions, he bombarded me with his already prepared questions. “What’s my story? Can you narrate it? What relation do I share with you? What is the story of others like me ? What’s my end story?”
I was clueless for a and on a serious note, didn’t have answers to the questions at that moment. All I did was promised to return back with answers the next day. I reflected on our relation, my approach towards the responsibilities I hold and the empathetic side of it and I found the answers lies in ‘My Experiments in Pens’.
Inspired by the famous autobiography ‘My Experiments with Truth’ by M.K.Gandhi which focuses on in utmost honesty and dimensionless reflection of personal growth with acceptance and building a self-relationship. ‘My Experiments with Pens’ on the similar note is an attempt by team ‘ElemenTree’ and our Future Green Leaders to focus on understanding the life cycle, relationship, and end of a Pen. It is an experiment to know “Why’, ‘What’ and ‘How’ of the existence of things like Pens in our life.
Every year we use almost 10-15 billion single-use plastic pens. Most of these pens fail to get recycled because of single use & throw mindset, small size and lack of effort to collect and sell back to recycles. On this 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatama Gandhi, ElemenTree Education Foundation has launched our campaign “My Experiments with Pens” in Schools of Ahmedabad to experiment and explore for answers.
The campaign focuses on different threads of events related to Plastic Pens. The personification is just an attempt to give you a different lens of looking at the impact our actions have and the scale of the rising problem. We are driving methodologies to intervene in school to bring behavioral and structural changes. Stay Tuned for the experiments.
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