The Standpoint

A MARATHON FOR THE ENVIRONMENT

By

Karan Deep Singh

Prakriti, the Environment Society of Delhi College of Arts and Commerce organised a Paper Bag Making Marathon in their Annual Open-House Session on Wednesday, 19^th of August for this year. “Our intent was to churn out as many paper bags as possible through this event. Apart from that, it makes for a very small fun activity in college as a part of the Open-House Session”, said a working committee member of the society.

The paper bags were made out of old newspapers and will be used by the society in its attempt to make the college a plastic-bag free premise. The Marathon turned out to be a success with around 35-40 students churning out as many paper bags as possible in a matter of two hours. “We had our activity coordinators who demonstrated how easy it is to make a simple paper bag out of old newspapers and waste paper material”, said another active member with the society. The Standpoint spoke to one of these activity coordinators who told us: “The Marathon is about number, the focus was not on how creative you are but about how many you end up making in 2 hours and only then they stand the chance for the cash prize”.

The material and necessary stationary for paper-bag making were provided by the society and the participants were served refreshments in the break which was kept exactly in the middle of the activity after an hour.

At the end of the two-hour long activity, the society churned out more than 500 paper bags from the event. The Standpoint spoke to the teacher convenor of Prakriti and she said: “We keep organising such interesting activities in the college where students can learn how to contribute their bit for the cause of environment. Apart from that, we also organise The Green Youth Summit, the first University Level event organised by our student environmentalists.”

The event came to an end with distribution of cash prizes, merit certificates and participation certificates to the winners and participants.