Thanks for the great ideas. Some more thoughts:

Hi Green Gang!

I congratulate you on your thoughts. Great ideas.

From your suggestions and some thought I gave it, here is my list:

1. Let’s start small. With 2 small objectives.
2. Each member of the Green Gang must first practice convincing at least one person, and their own families. Each one of you must aspire to create one plastic bag free home – yours! Is this agreed?
3. Next, pick a friend and try convincing him to make his / her home plastic bag free. Is this agreed?
4. With those 2 learnings, we are all equipped a little better to convince our immediate circle of influence – your classmates. Here, even if we can convince just 25%, we will have achieved something.
5. Then, we could aim for the whole school. For this, we will need 2 tools. One, a presentation for everyone to be shown. This could be followed with an essay writing competition – the subject of it is “Why I shouldn’t use plastic bags, and how would I convince others to also avoid using plastic bags?”
6. We, Norquest Brands Private Limited will be happy to offer a prize of Rs.500 to the best essay from each class. From these winning essays we can select the best, second best and third best essays of the whole school. We will reward Rs.1500 to the best essay, Rs.1000 to the second best, and Rs. 750 to the third best essay from the whole school. I will not judge the essays. Each class must elect a group of 5 people who will read the class essays and select the winner. Similarly the school must select a group of 5 who will judge which is the best, second best and third best essays. This group of final selectors could be headed by/guided by Ms.Madhumita Pujari.

Tell me, are these prize amounts enough to motivate students to write?

Then we can start an all Ahmedabad, inter-school essay competition. And maybe by then we will have made some presentations together and maybe some other material which we can use when we spread the message outside DPS.

Okay, one question: Is there a place at DPS where we can make the folding pouch bags available for all students? And, I need your advise: What shall we price it at? Rs.50 or Rs.99?

I await your responses/comments.

Rajiv Badlani