This 23-year-old girl from Kerala is converting trash to art, beautifying a lake in her city

Water pollution is a serious problem in India. Poor waste disposal management has left our lakes and rivers at the verge of extinction. For instance, Bellandur lake in Bengaluru was recently in the news for its infamous froth and toxic water quality.

While the government and civic authorities usually play blame game as they fail to find an effective solution to these problems, many times, the public has taken the matter into its hands and come up with a solution.

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Among them is 23-year-old Aparna S, a first-year B.Ed. student from Kollam in Kerala, who is beautifying Ashtamudi Kayal lake bed by upcycling discarded glasses, thermocol, and plastic bags.

Speaking about this to The News Minute, Aparna said:

There would be so many bottles on the way, especially on the banks of the Ashtamudi lake. I began collecting the pretty ones and bringing them home. I have always liked to paint and draw, and this is what I did on the bottles. They became decorative.

Aparna’s hobby didn’t just transform bottles into a piece of art, but it also helped in clearing the waste from the lake bed. Later, when these bottles started piling up in Aparna’s backyard, she decided to sell them by creating a Facebook page called ‘Quppi’, which means bottle in Malayalam.

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Despite no formal training, Aparna’s artwork was so good that it created a buzz online. She added:

It was encouraging as I started getting a lot of orders. While I was happy that everyone loved my products, what made me happier was the fact that the areas from where I was picking these discarded bottles were slowly becoming cleaner, reports The Youth.

Aparna also proved to be an inspiration to others. People started collecting discarded plastic bottles, thermocol, plastic covers, disposable cups, and nylon clothes from the lake bed for upcycling and sent it to her.

However, while collecting the waste materials was easy, Aparna had a difficult time cleaning the insides of the bottles.

A lot of people joined us in this initiative, and we managed to collect about a truckload of bottles. They helped not just with the collection of bottles, but also cleaning those, reports The Youth.

This motivated Aparna to conduct another programme in her city on ‘World Water Day’ (March 22), which was attended by college students, teachers, and employees of the state health department.

Aparna also displayed a few of her art work made from discarded waste to show people about how objects can be cleaned, decorated, and reused.

Talking about people’s view on waste materials, Aparna said,

We often spend money to buy craft from the shop. Instead, we can only convert such waste materials into something useful. I was mocked so much for collecting waste from the road. It is that attitude that should change, reports TNM.

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