Character & Charisma #2

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen those words written in every classroom I have ever sat in. So ingrained into my head, each practice is second nature to me. I’ve never questioned throwing paper into the recycling bin, nor a plastic water bottle. What I thought was just being naive I later learned was more ignorant than I thought it was. I had no idea that this was not common knowledge back in Indian elementary schools. As I mentioned in my backstory, my parents immigrated from India. Having gone to school there, their curriculum was quite different from ours. By the time my sister and I were in school, my parents became critically aware of how our education had different practices then there’s did. We would have inter-school competitions of which classrooms could collect the most recyclable materials. I would frequently collect box tops from cereal boxes in order to build my stash of prizes.

My parents had never heard the term the five R’s before until I came home with homework having to describe each term. I got to sit and teach my parents what each word meant and why it was important. So fascinated by how young I was to understand such an important topic, my parents and I put together an initiative to help educate impoverished schools back in India about the importance of the five R’s and how they contribute to the livelihood of our world.

The Indian education system doesn’t teach children about environmentalism or other issues, which causes many of them to grow up without proper knowledge about how to treat the world, and dispose of trash. Walking through the streets of India is an entirely different experience than that of a normal American suburb. There is much more going on, and there is much more trash and overgrown plants littering the streets. This difference was the main motivation to create the film Five R, the name paying tribute to the phrase Reuse, Reduce, Recycle, Refuse, and Repair. After visiting the schools, I noticed that there was an absence of recycling bins. Even more surprisingly, the trash was still not being properly disposed of, with bags being left on sidewalks and where I had not been used to seeing them. I proposed the idea of my film, Five R, to my parents. I wanted to make the “common knowledge” that I had common to the students in India. Coming together with friends and family, we embarked on our annual summer trip to India – this time with the main purpose of creating the film. I traveled to many different schools within Southern India, speaking with students and teachers about my idea. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it in what would be the most effective way. It’s already hard to make an educational video relatable to students, but it’s even harder to make an educational film on a subject that students have never heard about because it’s not common practice within their homes, yet alone their country. I reached out to a local filmmaker for support in the process. We hired a professional videographer and started filming. The video is still one of my most prideful moments to look back on. What might have started as something so innate to me, became an informative video that has helped change the lives of many students, teachers, and schools within India. Something as simple as practicing the five R’s, helps maintain the health of the environment for years and generations to come.

This video is consistently shown in schools across India to this day. I have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from teachers and school faculty within India. I have gotten the opportunity to visit some of the schools where the video was shown and have seen an overwhelming amount of change that happened within how the school disposes of waste. I got to answer more questions with students about the five R’s and watched them put paper in the new recycling bins the school had collected.

I will never take hearing the words Reduce Reuse Recycle lightly again.