Who Is Lakshmi Menon? The Ecopreneur Creating Plantable Pens That Turn Waste Into Trees

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Every year, millions of throwaway plastic pens end up in landfills and remain there as a non-biodegradable pollutant for hundreds of years to come. To tackle this environmental problem, Indian designer and ecopreneur Lakshmi Menon came up with a simple solution. Via her social enterprise, Pure Living, she offered the product in the form of a plantable paper pen, which has a seed in its base. And once the pen runs out of ink, you can throw the pen and grow trees.

Who Is Lakshmi Menon? The Visionary Ecopreneur

Lakshmi Menon is a designer and social entrepreneur who works in Kerala, India. She returned to her home country after years of being an artist and designer in San Francisco, USA, to generate sustainable means of living for the underprivileged and address environmental pollution issues.

She started Pure Living (Products Upcycled, Recycled and Economised) to design zero-waste and eco-friendly products for daily use. Through her initiatives, she creates jobs for rural women, elderly citizens, and differently abled people so that they can have a respectable income source from their homes.

Apart from plantable pens, she is famous for running social campaigns such as Ammommathiri (wick making by elderly women) and the Pen Drive Campaign for plastic pen pollution.

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From Waste to Greenery: The Story Behind Pure Living and the Seed Pen Initiative

The inspiration for the plantable paper pen, also known as Entree or Rolapena, came to Lakshmi when she figured out that disposable plastic pens are one of the most neglected single-use plastics used in homes and educational institutions.

• The barrel of the pen is made out of recycled newspapers or leftover material from the printing press, while traditional plastic material is completely skipped.

• Each pen carries an organic seed at its base. Even though she was using vegetable seeds such as chilli and spinach, later she switched mostly to Agastya (Hummingbird tree) seeds, which play an important part in Ayurveda because of their healing qualities.

• All that one needs to do after exhausting the ink of the pen is to plant the paper barrel in the soil and keep it hydrated until a tree or plant starts growing.

Environmental Impact

• Using one paper seed pen will cut down on plastic consumption by up to 95% when compared with conventional disposable ballpoint pens.

• Utilising recycled paper from local printers, Pure Living has saved tons of paper from ending up in landfills.

• Many hundreds of thousands of pens have been sold around the world, germinating into trees and green spots in cities and villages alike.

• The semi-automated manufacturing of these pens provides livelihood to many local women’s self-help groups and differently-abled people through fair employment wages.

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How Ecopreneurs Like Lakshmi Menon Are Revolutionising Eco-Friendly Innovation

Ecopreneurs are revolutionising the manufacturing and consumption processes of common household objects. Through incorporation of sustainability principles within the product life cycle itself as opposed to an add-on process, Lakshmi Menon has managed to show that green products can be not only effective and cost-effective but also capable of transforming societies. Her efforts indicate that minor changes to product designs can resolve major environmental problems.

Conclusion

The example of the plantable pen by Lakshmi Menon is a testament to the power of design ingenuity to transform something that we throw away into something that helps our ecosystem. 

Image credits: Instagram

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