India CSR News Network
BHOPAL: About 2.47 million trees are cut down every day. Deforestation, land use change and forest management are responsible for loss of over 15 billion trees each year. India has just 28 trees per person as compared to China which has 102 trees per person, US 716, Brazil 1,494 and Canada 8,953 trees per person. At this alarming rate of deforestation, it will take less than 100 years to destroy all the forests.
Dainik Bhaskar group has been running the annual campaign ‘Ek Ped Ek Zindagi’ for last 10 years. It aims to drive people’s participation for planting trees and nurture it. This year as part of driving engagement with its readers, trade partners and opinion makers, an innovative mailer was made- a set of three remarkably different pencils. These pencils were different from the normal wooden pencils because they were made from bio-degradable, eco- friendly paper- mache.
The newspaper group collaborated with Botanists and Paper-mache experts to come up with these innovative pencils. Made from Paper mache, the back of the pencils consist of Humming-bird, Guava and Tulsi seeds packed inside a weather proof capsule. While a red flowering plant of Hummingbird would suit a mid -sized garden patch, a Guava tree can flourish well in a big garden and Tulsi, having both religious and medicinal value is fit for high-rises with little or no green space. This offers people the freedom to plant, depending on the available garden patch.
These three pencils have been packed in a blister case. Once the pencil has been used, it can be planted in the soil. The capsule, when watered gets dissolved in moist soil and little green saplings emerge from the ground. Over time, the paper-mache pencil too, dissolves in the soil.
