These youngsters have given many people life goals – on how to keep the planet clean and green. In the past three years, under the umbrella organisation Vrikshit, students from all over the country have got together to volunteer for clean-up drives. Their work isn’t just limited to the cities but has expanded to mountains, the valleys, mangroves, and the beaches of the country. 

More than 3500 youngsters working under the Clean and Green India initiative of the Delhi-based organisation Vrikshit Foundation, have cleaned 7.8 million kilograms of waste, planted and parented over 20,000 trees in the past three years. Till now the foundation has reached 32 Indian cities, which include places such as Agartala, Varanasi and Kashmir.

On World Environment Day, the organisation also launched the ButtRush Campaign, under which volunteers joined hands together to collect over 3,87,000 cigarette butts in a 24-hour marathon in Delhi. This campaign is reportedly the  world’s first 24-hour marathon to collect hazardous cigarette butts.

The waste collected by the young volunteers of Vrikshit is usually sent to the Delhi Municipal Solid Waste Solutions Limited and to the Material Recovery Facilitation Centres in the city. Here this waste is segregated and then recycled accordingly.

Through its volunteers, the foundation has also planted more than 20,000 trees in different parts of the country in a span of three years. The cities in which the major plantation drives took place were Delhi, Bikaner, and Hyderabad. The plantation drives are organised on a manageable scale so that the team leaders can pay proper attention and timely care to the planted saplings till the time they start thriving in the given environment. 

Surely, Vrikshit is spreading a green lesson that everyone can adopt.