The Green Prep Guide: Learning Sustainably at Home!!

For most of us, our exams are ongoing. In my heart, for all of us: exams are not tests designed to stress us out, or make us feel bad - but we can enjoy them, use them as activities to analyse our strengths and improvement areas, on our journey to find what we are truly passionate about.

Whenever I see me and my friends preparing, one thing never seems to espace my mind. We use so many resources: printouts, so many pens, so many fresh sheets for our practice questions, so many notebooks. And at the heart of all this: nature. It takes approximately 17 trees to to be cut down to make just one ton of paper. A single A4 size sheet takes upto 8 gallons of water to produce! So, how can we be more sustainable during our practice at home, and how can we keep the planet in mind to use resources responsibly while also enjoying learning?

Firstly, instead of printing notes or using a lot of notebooks, we could switch to digital resources on platforms, using presentations and practice sheets to enhance our learning. Even a single sheet of paper requires a lot of water and trees, to process the wood and turn it into pulp. An A4 sheet of paper can consume between 8-10 gallons for its production, and just one ton of paper can use a whopping 17-25 trees. And with approximately 1.4 billion school students on this planet - that's a lot of water and trees. By transforming our platform for practice, we can reduce the demand for deforestation, reduce the strain on the water supply of a scarce region such as Haryana, and cut down on ink and printing waste generated.

Secondly, we can make use of the beautiful and tranquil natural light Mother Earth has so graciously gifted to us, available from approximately 7:00 am to 6:00 pm, instead of making use of desk lamps and light bulbs. During times with a little dim lighting outisde, we could certainly opt for more energy efficient lamps, such as 10-watt bulbs, instead of more energy consuming ones. Just imagine, if each student in the world uses a 60-watt desk lamp for 2 hours, that uses enough energy to power the whole city of Gurugram for 200 days!! Choosing either natural light or greener lighting options magnificently reduces our electricity usage and lowers our carbon footprint. Plus, less reliance on artificial lighting leads to direct energy savings for the planet!

And lastly, we must choose reusables over disposables! We can opt for refillable ink pens, and reuse notebooks and binders rather than buying new ones each year. The pen industry in India produces approximately 2.4 billion pens a year, and upto 91% of this plastic is wasted and dumped in landfills, not being reused. Another very useful, resource efficient method I have learned from my father is: using recycled sheets of paper rather than fresh ones. We get bills, and receipts, old forms, and signature sheets, documents and documents. Instead of throwing these away, we can use the blank spaces and empty sides in these to make our notes and practice! These small tips help us immensely minimize plastic waste, reduce pressure on our gigantic landfills, and save crucial resources needed to manufacture these daily supplies.

So together, let's implement these small changes in our daily learning habits, as we can make studying not just about preparing for exams, but preparing for a cleaner and greener future, where we are in compassionate coexistence with the planet - a better tomorrow!