Hyderabad [India], June 24 (HornbillTV): An eleventh-grade student in Hyderabad is making use of technology to save trees in her area.

The student is also spearheading an initiative that aims to save the ‘green belt’ in the state by encouraging students to reuse textbooks.

About six months ago, the Hyderabad resident and class 11 student of a school here started an initiative to increase the green belt in the city by undertaking plantation drives near residential societies.

She then thought of seeking help from technology to save trees and for this, created a website named ‘Carbon Neutral Warrior’, which links people who want to buy textbooks with those who want to donate them.

The student Anusha Agarwal told ANI, “I started an initiative called carbon-neutral warriors. The carbon-neutral warriors include three initiatives where firstly, children in my community plant saplings by their choice.”

“Secondly, we hold panel discussions in collaboration with an NGO and green brigades to spread awareness about the issue and understand how we can take small steps to reduce carbon emissions. Thirdly is a textbook reuse initiative,” she said, adding that she created a website that links the donors to receivers.

“Receivers don’t have to buy the textbooks, and if this chain continues, more trees can be saved and cutting down trees will be lessened,” she added.

Anusha’s aim is to see the website being used across all the schools in Hyderabad and students being benefitted. More trees will be saved, she added. “We have to save the planet as our future is here. It is our responsibility to take small actions and these actions will make a big difference collectively,” she said.

Preeti, mother of Anusha, said to ANI, “I was very happy when I got to know about the initiative. Initially, she needed support from us. For example, she had an idea of planting saplings but didn’t know where to procure it from. We researched and found that GHMC provides free saplings for plantation drives. So we got them and did plantation.”

“Later, she learned to design websites. As on date, 12 schools are connected with the website. We want all the schools to come forward and use the website. I feel very good when kids of her age can do miracles,” she said.

Shweta, a beneficiary of the website told ANI, “I used the website and it’s a very good initiative taken up by Anusha. The website is user-friendly, registration is very simple and it has a donate and receive button. When I registered, I quickly got the response. I immediately got the response from a couple of people.” She further said she received the books for 10th grade through the website.