Eco-warrior converts empty cracker boxes into plant holders

While driving his car in the city on the night of Deepavali, Hafiz Khan saw people celebrating the festival by bursting crackers. He stopped the car and watched the crackers exploding and creating a riot of colours in the sky. Soon he noticed people leaving the empty cracker boxes and wrapping paper on the roadside. Hafiz didn’t like the idea of littering the road; so he started collecting those boxes and put them together at the trunk of his car. He took a selfie and shared the picture on his social media page urging people to hand over the cracker trash which he will re-use to plant saplings. From the next day onwards, Hafiz’s mobile didn’t stop ringing.

“This is a first-of-its-kind initiative in Chennai. I’ve been getting a lot of calls from various apartment complexes and individuals in the city asking me to collect the empty cracker boxes. We cannot educate people on how to dispose of waste (cracker boxes) or ask them to stop bursting crackers. But, we can ask them to be responsible for the waste. If people are finding it hard to throw away the empty boxes, they can hand over them to us. We plant saplings and take it to our nursery in Kottivakkam or give back the boxes after planting saplings inside them. Anyone can plant trees, but we need to engage the audience by keeping them informed, bringing in new thoughts and possibilities. Small, innovative things like this could create a spark in people's mind and that's what we are aiming for,” says Hafiz Khan, who creates manmade forestsacross Chennai.

It's been three days since he started the initiative and the response has been overwhelming. The team has collected over 27,000 boxes from different apartments and individuals in the city. He does this noble activity through a trust called Communitree, along with a few volunteers.

“We collect boxes, outer shells of rockets, small funnels, flower pots and cylindrical bombs that are more than six inches in size and reuse them to plant saplings. These cardboard boxes can retain moisture when we pour water and this makes it easier to maintain the plant until it grows to a certain stage. Once the seed germinates, you can transfer the plantto a pot or on the ground,”says Hafiz.  

He also makes sure that the boxes are clean without any excess gun powders stick to the cans. “Mostly, the cans will be clean. But we didn’t want to take any risk. I didn’t want to use any fertilisers to clean the cans and enquired on how to clean the boxes in a natural way. Somebody suggested trying cow dung water and it worked really well,” explains the green warrior

Hafiz has been planting saplings across various spots in Chennai to make the city green once again. “So far, we have planted four lakh trees and we maintain and manage it for three years. This would benefit all of us and our future generations. Moreover, this is the most wonderfultribute we can give to Mother Earth,” he remarks.