Four teenage students in Ghaziabad are the masterminds behind Pahal, a startup that replaces single-use plastic with more sustainable alternatives, the Better India reported.
The young entrepreneurs involved in the project are Simran Arora, CEO; Akshita Joshi, CMO; Maanya Tyagi, CFO; and Arshya Singh, COO.
At an entrepreneurship camp, the four students were encouraged to identify a real-world problem and design a business that would provide a solution for it. Together, the young women gravitated toward a problem that they saw every day: the unsustainable use of plastic in their daily lives.
With two more years of development, that idea blossomed into the startup Pahal.
"We started Pahal as a movement because, in the beginning, we were still discovering how to build a business. So we began by replacing plastic within our school campus," Joshi told the Better India.
Single-use plastic is an environmental issue for several reasons. It can take decades or centuries to break down naturally, leading to a buildup of trash that ranges from ugly to harmful. Meanwhile, pieces break off these items and turn into microplastics, which contaminate water and food for both wildlife and people.
The health effects are still being catalogued, but they include everything from increased cancer risk to reduced blood flow in the brain. While some locations, like Massachusetts, have instituted plastic bands, there are still many plastics entering the environment.
The young visionaries saw the extensive use of plastic bags around them and wanted to replace them with more sustainable, reusable tote bags. However, their principal encouraged them to start with a smaller step, focusing on the familiar territory of the lunchroom. After writing multiple proposals to the administration, the four of them succeeded in having the plastic spoons and forks replaced with wooden alternatives.
After that success, the team turned toward making their business idea a reality.
"It came with a lot of meetings, crying sessions, and fights, but we managed," Joshi said.
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$200 or more 💰 Their initial showing was modest: a table at a parent-teacher event with 100 tote bags to sell. They expected to sell fewer than half, but in the end, they sold out.
Pahal is reinvesting those earnings into an expanded line of sustainable products and looking toward a hopeful future.
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