Sharjah
When I came home from school one day, I found a large number of supermarket brochures strewn all over my building’s ground floor, and it was then when it struck me: to make use of what had already been considered waste and yet been ignored all the same.
We often find such pamphlets that have been left for the purpose of advertisement, but eventually end up in the landfill. I decided to use them to innovate and made a multipurpose organizer completely out of waste materials, which is beneficial both for the environment and for humans. This is something resourceful, colorful and useful, to organise the clutter on your table and creatively impact the environment.
We dispose a cereal box without batting an eyelid, but if a little thought was put into it, there is always more than a single use for anything. Most cereal boxes are made from recycled cardboard, and reusing them is truly utilising them to the maximum extent, which is what the concept of upcycling is based on.
Sticking two cereal boxes, neatly sticking leaflets onto them and decorating them with otherwise discarded ribbons, are all the steps that it took me to make the organiser, which can be utilised on a daily basis. As a student, I use it to keep my assignments, worksheets and notepads.
Dilbag Thakur, a fervent environmentalist, appreciated the creative idea and said: “We really need steps such as these, to be incorporated in our daily lives if we truly want to make a difference.”
The message that I spread is not only to the readers, but to supermarkets and hypermarkets as well, which print out large, colorful promotional brochures on the weekends, to limit their production of these and more importantly, to adopt more sustainable ways of advertisement, using online methods for example.
I would like to encourage all readers to take initiatives similar to this. If we embark on ways to protect our environment, then making a difference isn’t a herculean task. Because sometimes, we need a box, to think out of the box.
— The reader is a student based in Sharjah.
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