Dainik Bhaskar pencils that can grow into trees

About 2.47 million trees are felled every day. Deforestation, land use change and forest management are responsible for loss of over 15 billion trees each year. India has just 28 trees per person as compared to China, which has 102 trees per person, US 716, Brazil 1,494 and Canada 8,953 trees per person. At this alarming rate of deforestation, it will take less than 100 years to destroy all the forests.

05 Oct 2016 | By Dibyajyoti Sarma

The Dainik Bhaskar group has been running the annual campaign ‘Ek Ped Ek Zindagi’ for the last 10 years. It aims to drive people’s participation for planting trees and nurture it. This year as part of driving engagement with its readers, trade partners and opinion makers, an innovative mailer was made- a set of three remarkably different pencils. These pencils were different from the normal wooden pencils because they were made from biodegradable, eco- friendly papier-mâché.

The newspaper group collaborated with botanists and Papier-mâché experts to come up with these innovative pencils. Made from Papier-mâché, the back of the pencils consist of hummingbird tree, guava and tulsi seeds packed inside a weatherproof capsule. While a red flowering plant of Hummingbird would suit a mid -sized garden patch, a Guava tree can flourish well in a big garden and Tulsi, having both religious and medicinal value, is fit for high-rises with little or no green space. This offers people the freedom to plant, depending on the available garden patch.

These three pencils have been packed in a blister case. Once the pencil has been used, it can be planted in the soil. The capsule, when watered, dissolves in moist soil and little green saplings emerge from the ground. Over time, the Papier-mâché pencil too, dissolves in the soil.

Tags : Dainik Bhaskar,Ek Ped Ek Zindagi;