16 REAL-LEADERS.COM / SPRING 2022 KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS INSPIRING THE FUTURE AS A CHANGEMAKER? EMAIL US AT EDITORIAL@REAL-LEADERS.COM VIHAAN AND HIS LITTLE BROTHER NAV WERE SITTING in the back seat of a car, on their way to school. The traffic was dense, as usual, and the air outside was smoggy with exhaust fumes. The polluted air in Delhi had been a problem for Vihaan for a long time. Because he had asthma, he often wasn’t allowed to go outside and play with his friends. So that day, when he opened the newspaper, one article caught his eye. “I read an article about how India’s largest landfill, the Ghazipur landfill, had collapsed and caught fire,” he remembers. “It released hazardous fumes into the atmosphere, as you can imagine.” That day, for the first time, Vihaan connected two problems that had always bothered him: Delhi’s dismal air quality and the huge amounts of trash generated each day in the city. Delhi’s 19 million people produce around 9,000 tons of solid waste every day. Most of the trash ends up in landfills, where it is neither recycled nor disposed of correctly. But since many landfills are already overflowing, a lot of trash is burned in the street. These trash fires release toxic fumes into the air — as do the landfills, where the gigantic mountains of waste also contaminate the groundwater. Vihaan decided that, at the very least, he didn’t want his own waste to end up in the landfill and continue to feed the fires that ultimately were making it hard for him — and everyone else — to breathe. He started by segregating it into dry and wet waste, making it Family MembersThat TeamedUp to Solve a Social Crisis “SEEING THE CLIMATE IN THIS STATE, IT’S IMPORTANT TO FIX OUR MISTAKES.” — Vihaan Agarwal By Marianne Larned CHANGEMAKERS much easier to recycle later. But then, when the trash was picked up, Vihaan saw that the workers were simply mixing all the trash — so his separating work had been in vain. But he didn’t give up. Instead, he contacted a company that would pick up the segregated waste and make sure that it was recycled. However, he again discovered that the company he hired to do the recycling wasn’t doing it correctly. So he and his brother decided to start their own organization, One Step Greener. At first, he and his brother did the trash sorting and recycling for just their own home, but soon, 20 other households were doing it too. “From 20 households, it grew to a hundred` in a matter of just two months,” Vihaan says. “Initially, our goal was just to survive and to grow the project as much as possible,” Vihaan says. But today, One Step Greener serves more than 1,400 households in 14 different neighborhoods, as well as in a few schools and offices all over Delhi. Their model worked so well that soon their nonprofit organization was turning a profit. So Vihaan and Nav immediately invested the funds into a second project to help improve air quality in Delhi: planting trees. “I think it’s essential because we are going to grow up and live in this world,” says Nav. “Seeing the climate in this state, it’s important to fix our mistakes — and right now, waste in India is not taken seriously.” n Turning Trash into Trees Vihaan and Nav Agarwal / India
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