After watching Plastic cow, a short film documenting the devastating impact of plastic bags in India — particularly on cows, whose stomachs fill with plastic until they die in agony — the life of Osho Kalia, 32, changed for ever. Seeing the images of 50 kilograms of plastic being extracted from the belly of an animal lying on the ground, poisoned, shook him to his core and opened his eyes.

The suffering of cows

Troubled by what he had seen, Kalia wanted to find out whether cows, considered sacred in India, were truly dying as a result of plastic ingestion. He visited a stable in his area, where the owners confirmed that every month two or three cows were admitted for plastic poisoning. Cattle are as common on Indian streets as rubbish; they roam in search of food scraps, swallowing anything that smells of food — plastic included.

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An ideal worth a career

Kalia decided to leave a stable, well-paid job at IT giant IBM to move into the social sector and try to stop the plague of plastic. With the support of the authorities in the city of Gurgaon, Kalia began making cloth bags and making them available to shopkeepers and consumers in the area, explaining the benefits of this eco-friendly alternative and discouraging the use of plastic bags.

The cloth bag revolution

In 2017, he co-founded the Geeli Mitti Foundation, set up to teach local communities to become self-sustaining through sustainable living practices, with the aim of bringing about concrete social change. One of the Geeli Mitti Foundation's first campaigns was called No to polythene, yes to cloth bags, and was aimed at curbing the use of plastic bags. Not only that — Kalia decided to involve the inmates of Gurugram prison to scale up production, offer a real alternative to plastic and provide employment for the 2,200 detainees.

Sustainable fabric

An area equipped with fifty sewing machines was set up inside Gurgaon prison for the production of cloth bags. After finding a teacher who could train the inmates — a local tailor — Kalia, a resourceful and enterprising man, began thinking about how to obtain fabric in a sustainable way. He therefore decided, with the support of the local Red Cross, to ask all the city's textile companies to donate the surplus fabric they would otherwise throw away. "In the production process, a large amount of excess fabric is often of no use to the company," he explained. "We wanted companies to come forward and donate this fabric rather than waste it. We didn't want this project to take off and then suddenly stop due to a lack of fabric."

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Redemption for women and inmates

The project at Gurgaon prison was halted due to changes in the prison administration, but the revolution set in motion by Osho Kalia is now unstoppable. The project has been replicated in Faridabad prison and in villages across Kashmir, Ghaziabad, Ranchi, Jharkhand, Gurgaon, Nainital and Bhopal. In addition to inmates, women are now also employed in various parts of the country, giving them the opportunity to achieve economic independence and contribute to their family income.

A nation without plastic

"The great thing is that what began as a personal project has turned into a broad movement to curb plastic pollution," said Kalia. "It not only offers consumers an alternative to plastic, but also creates income opportunities for women and inmates." Kalia's story, which we have told on the occasion of World Environment Day, dedicated this year to the fight against plastic pollution, reminds us, once again, that each of us can be a decisive piece in the creation of a better world, always bearing in mind Robert Swan's maxim: "the greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it."