Licypriya Kangujam, a 10-year-old climate activist, is hoping to get her name registered in the Guinness World Records after spelling out a sentence -- Save our Planet and our Future -- with 6,056 plastic bottles.
While the Guinness World Records is yet to verify the event, the current record of making a sentence with plastic bottles has been done with 3,325 bottles by St Edward Prep School in Berkshire, United Kingdom, in February 2022.
In 9.02 minutes, Licypriya arranged the plastic bottles into lines and wrote "Save our Planet and our Future" at Ryan International School in Noida Extension.
The plastic bottles used to make the sentence by Licypriya were collected through her 'Plastic Money Shop', an initiative where she offered free rice, saplings and school stationery items in exchange of 1 kg of single-used plastic waste.
"Guinness World record attempt is just an initiative with the support of the school to send a strong message on the global plastic pollution crisis. It's not about just breaking a world record, we're fighting one of the biggest problems of our time -- the climate change and the plastic pollution crisis,” she said.
India alone produces about 3.5 million tonnes of plastic waste annually. The plastic pollution adversely affects our ecosystems and is also linked to air pollution, the child environmental activist said.
She also stressed that plastic consumption must be reduced at home.