NEW DELHI — As coronavirus cases spread around the world earlier this year, Binish Desai found himself increasingly nervous. It wasn’t only the pandemic that worried him, but the waste it was generating.
Masks and protective gear were being used a single time and then discarded by the tons, eventually destined for landfills or bodies of water.
“I have eco-anxiety,” said Desai, a 27-year-old environmental activist and innovator in western India. When he sees waste, he said, he automatically begins thinking about ways to use it.
By September, he had come up with a solution: Take the used protective gear and mold it into bricks for buildings. He already has made more than 40,000 such bricks for projects including homes and factories, and is gearing up to produce 15,000 a day.
Read more in the Seattle Times.