Team News Riveting
As the bursting sound of Diwali crackers fall silent, Hafiz Khan and the volunteers of his non-government organisation (NGO) CommuniTREE are in the streets.
They are on a mission; collecting the cracker waste and using it for green missions. Literally, converting the Diwali trash into a green treasure!
Hafiz Khan and his team collect cracker cases from homes in Chennai and repurpose them into plant holders. “We use cardboard cases from crackers to plant saplings. This Diwali season, we have already collected over 80,000 cases,” says Hafiz.
The team accepts cracker cases, rocket shells, cylindrical bombs, flower pots or fountain crackers, among others, for their use. Hafiz adds that this initiative was started last year when the team collected almost 27,000 cracker cases.
CommuniTREE, as the name suggests, involves the community in its mission. “We collect the cases from people and return them with planted saplings, and if they don’t want the saplings, they can simply leave the cases with us,” says the 50-year-old.
The organisation has 40,000 saplings in their nursery. The saplings include jackfruit, amla, guava, neem and beech tree saplings, among other different varieties of plants. These saplings are grown in CommuniTREE’s nursery and are later planted in different locations. Bundling up the cardboard rolls to form a makeshift pot, Hafiz adds that the saplings can grow up to five feet tall.
Hafiz shares, “In the beginning, our nursery used plastic covers to grow the saplings, but as it was not good for the environment, we stopped using it. Then we tried bamboo and many other eco-friendly materials, but they were costly and not sustainable. Then one day, I thought of the idea of growing saplings in cardboard boxes. Cardboard is good fodder, and at the same time, it has many more advantages of growing saplings. That is how I decided that Diwali is the best time to collect cardboard holders, as they are used to make cracker cases.”
The boxes are made of strong cardboard, which is excellent to grow saplings in. It retains moisture when pouring water and that makes it easy to maintain. After the seed germinates, directly plant it in the soil. The seeds take five to 15 days to germinate. The saplings they have are all native varieties including neem, beech, jackfruit, guava, ashoka and amla among others.
However, to neutralise the effect of gunpowder on the case, the team washes it with cow dung water.
