It started as a Class 9 science project on plastic pollution. Six months later, the students of a government school in Nagaland had collected 12,000 bottles from the riverbank and packed each one tight with chip packets and wrappers.
The resulting eco-bricks, set in mud mortar and plastered with lime, now form a bus shelter at the village junction. It has survived two monsoons.
The students have since mapped every plastic hotspot along a two-kilometre stretch of the river and run a monthly clean-up with the village youth club.
