The Journey of a Bottle: How to make a Vertical Garden in Rajasthan, India

During my time in Rajasthan, India, I was using a fancy, overly-priced filtered water bottle that I bought prior to my travels (which was a complete waste of my money, by the way). Due to using the same bottle everyday, I never realised how many bottles of water were bought, drank, and then thrown away or burned after just one use. I spent a good month in India being completely oblivious to the fact that the bottles used to distribute clean drinking water were also non-reusable and advised buyers to chuck away these bottles after use!

Whilst in the city of Jodhpur, where our Mid Phase Review* was hosted, the hotel that we stayed in gave all 24 volunteers a 1 litre bottle of drinking water at every meal. That was 62 bottles per day for the 3 days that we were there. 186 bottles. This doesn't include the extra bottles that we requested. So lets say, in the 3 days that we were there, we effectively used 200 non-reusable bottles when we all had water bottles of our own.

Some bottles collected from hotel in Jodhpur

On the morning of leaving the hotel in Jodhpur I asked my Project Coordinator what happens to all the bottles once they have been used. She told me that they will probably either be chucked away or burned. Naturally, this worried me as we had used A LOT of plastic bottles, so I decided to round up all the bottles that hadn't already been taken away, and with help from the other volunteers, we successfully carried around 100 bottles back to Kotri, a 300km haul.

Me and another volunteer were focusing on the environment and how to effectively reuse materials that would otherwise be burned and cause more harm than good. We decided to make a Vertical Garden where both flowers and food could grow.



How to make a Vertical Garden in Kotri, Rajasthan:

Step 1) Save a lot of plastic bottles from being thrown away or burned.

Step 2) Ask questions. Where do we get seeds from? Where do we get soil from? There is a drought, will this even work? Can we get all the resources we need locally? Will anyone turn up to the sessions?!

Step 3) Fertilise some soil. Hurry, a Manthan mentor, helped us to dig up some unfertilised soil, and taught us how to effectively fertilise it using cow dung. One of the most liberating things I did in India was get my hands deep into some cow faeces!

Hurry, Harry, Hannah and Tamlal Ji fertilising soil; Indian style!

Step 4) Find some seeds! Ask people to help you. Find local resources and find the demand. For example, we planted chili seeds.

Step 5) Find some youth to join in the sessions. This was the tricky part. We held a few different sessions but the youth did not turn up to any!

Step 6) Don't give up.

Step 7) Make the session more fun. Include painting and music!

Hannah and youth girls painting bottles

 Step 8) With your newly found group of environmentalists, start cutting and painting the bottles, plant the seeds, hang the bottles from the biggest tree in the village and show off their great work!

Some Vertical Gardens hanging from tree in Kotri

The purpose of doing the Vertical Garden session was to teach the youth of Kotri to take care of their environment and that anything can be reused to make something. We painted the bottles to make them look more appealing and planted seeds that the village depend on. Part of the youth group we set up was to help the villagers to understand that the more active they are in their community, the better. We asked them to instead of burning or disposing of bottles, to make some Vertical Gardens of their own.

Tamlal Ji, Hannah and Harry

Tips:
- If you like to carry a water bottle around with you, invest in a durable one rather than buying a new one everyday
- reuse bottles by either becoming creative or reusing them to drink water out of
- drink tap water instead of buying bottled water everyday
- encourage your friends to do the same
- love your environment


Mid Phase Review* - 3 days out of our villages to relax, reflect and review our work progress to that date and to make action plans.