Mumabi: Otrivin Breathe Clean has launched a new initiative, "Pollution Capture Pencils," turning pollution waste by-products into school supplies for local children.

Air pollution is considered the world's largest environmental health threat, with 98 per cent of children in India breathing toxic air.

The programme promotes the adoption of everyday actions that help reduce the impact of air pollution on children’s breathing health.

For the first phase of this initiative, three schools with the poorest air quality across Bengaluru were identified to partner with. Otrivin Breathe Clean installed twenty-two sustainable and self-cleaning air purifiers across these three schools, in a bid to improve the air quality of approximately one thousand school children every day, in this innovative pilot project.

After two months, these specially designed purifiers, installed both inside and outside the school buildings, had together cleaned over two billion cubic feet of polluted air. The toxic air particles, or ‘pollution residue’ were then gathered to mix with graphite.

This mixture was used as the core of 10,000 pencils, which were specially produced and designed to be distributed by teachers to students for use as tools for multiple interventions to raise funds for the installation of more air purifiers. Otrivin Breathe Clean focused on the solution and transformed the pollution residue into pencils, which will act as instruments of change for the kids.

The pencils, which come in specially designed packs designed by local Bengaluru artist Gautam Datta, reflect the identity and personality of each school and its students.

Haleon Indian subcontinent head of marketing Anurita Chopra said, "We are led by our purpose—to deliver better everyday health to humanity. In order for people to be healthy, they need to be living in a healthy world, which includes having clean air to breathe. However, air pollution is having a catastrophic impact on our ability to breathe clean air, especially amongst children, who perhaps contribute the least to this problem but are affected the most. We hope that the "Pollution Capture Pencils" initiative, as part of Otrivin's "Actions to Breathe Cleaner" program, inspires people to take simple actions to make the world a better place to live in and breathe. Do watch out for the next chapters of the campaign, wherein we use these pencils to bring forward the expressions of the children to help build awareness as well as help many more to breathe clean."

Panjurli Labs CEO Ashik SV said, "People all over the world are looking at India as a growing economy, but at the same time I feel India has a huge role to play in terms of helping the global economy. But first, we need to make the children healthy. Through this project, we are trying to ensure the same. The thing I’m happiest about is that every day more and more kids are able to breathe clean air for 6-7 hours per day and that we’re able to protect them during that time."