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Walking home from school one evening, Vinisha came across a neighbourhood ironing cart vendor. After finishing his work of ironing people’s clothing, he was emptying his iron of charcoal and throwing it away.
Interested, Vinisha went home and researched the use of charcoal. She soon found out that making charcoal involved cutting down many trees and burning charcoal let off harmful smoke that adds to air pollution. Vinisha couldn’t believe that no one had done anything about this matter.
She checked to see how many ironing vendors there were in India to get an idea of the size of the problem. Vanisha found out there were about 10 million and each one burnt at least 5kgs of charcoal a day, requiring the deforestation of 60 fully grown trees. Vinisha spoke to her parents about what she had just learnt and they encouraged her to come up with something else that could replace the 10 million charcoal-driven ironing carts in India.
Vinisha came up with the idea of a solar powered ironing cart. The cart has solar panels on the roof and can store any extra energy in a battery for use on dark or overcast days. Vinisha’s hard work and creativity was recognised when she won the Children’s Climate Prize in 2020.
But Vinisha will not stop at that. She knows that we need to keep working together towards a better future. She says, ‘I am both concerned and happy for the future. Because I know my generation is working towards a better future of this planet. But I am concerned because there are still people on this planet who think climate change isn’t real.’
