At just 13 years old and in the eighth grade, Ashila Basnet is emerging as a remarkable leader at Shree Sharmik Secondary School in Hetauda, proudly serving as the President of the Waste Smart Club. Her journey began with a workshop in Kathmandu, where she felt overwhelmed by the prospect of taking on such a role.

“I almost suggested that someone else take the lead instead,” she recalls, a hint of vulnerability in her voice. But with gentle encouragement from her friends and unwavering support from her teacher, Ashila found the courage to embrace the challenge. “At first, I was nervous, but my teacher helped me learn from my mistakes,” she explains, her eyes lighting up with the memory.

Her confidence grew with each club meeting, inspiring her to start conversations about waste segregation at home and adopt mindful habits. Ashila’s journey shows how support and determination can spark positive change, motivating her community to take responsibility for their environment. 

When Tshering Lhamo was in college, she co-founded a transboundary initiative of students called Gross International Nature (GIN). At the time, GIN mainly focused on research in Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. However, Tshering and her team quickly understood that research alone was not enough. 

In the search for concrete impact, Tshering and her team looked for environment-related problems in Bhutan. They found that plastic waste and plastic-waste generation did not receive the attention they deserved. For example, there was no basic data on the type and nature of plastic waste Bhutan generated.

Additionally, they found that Bhutan did not have adequate recycling facilities and capacity. Their business going forward, they decided, would be a combination of their research background and impact-based product design. They collaborated with a Dutch recycling company to learn and develop a marketable product called UR Bricks, a brick made entirely from recycled plastic that can be used in light-weight construction. 

They spent three years making the product market-ready, winning several start-up competitions along the way, such as the ICIMOD competition, UNDP Springboard, and Climate Launchpad. The prize money from these wins helped them keep the company going, but it was never enough to set up the factory they needed to make UR Bricks truly market-ready. 

Through the PLEASE Project, for which they partnered with the Bhutan Ecological Society, Tshering and her team finally have access to the support they have needed since the start. They are not only educating Bhutanese on how to identify and segregate plastic waste at a household level, but they are also buying this segregated waste and turning it into UR Bricks. The PLEASE project has also enabled them to build their recycling hub in Bjemina Industrial Estate. This will enable them to not only bring UR Bricks to the mass market but also give them the space and opportunity to experiment with more innovation in the future. Tshering hopes GIN and BES’s advocacy will convince people to reduce their plastic waste generation and improve household plastic waste segregation. And for the plastic waste that is inevitably generated, she hopes UR Bricks and other innovations from GIN will serve as an incentive for people to be more responsible with their waste.