ENVIRONMENT, TEAMWORK, AND LEADERSHIP

ANANYA PATEL talks about the evolution of the Gigatonne Challenge, a grass roots environmental movement. She also explores leadership, why teams should sometimes take a pause to connect, and how a sense of responsibility toward the people involved helps her stay focused on the challenges at hand. This is part 2 of her interview with ELIZABETH DENLEY.

- ELIZABETH DENLEY

Next Steps in the Gigatonne Challenge

Q: How many teams are there around the world now in the Gigatonne participating Challenge?

At this point, we have around 70 teams - some not so active, some very active, some at level 1, some at level 4 which is 40 times the amount of waste. It increases 10 times for each level.

I designed a lot of the crowdfunding material for social media, especially for the more focused campaigns to communicate with the world about the vision and the work that has been done.

Q: Apart from food waste, what other projects are involved?

There are a couple of teams in Canada working with energy, with their local councils. The councils are receptive to creating policies that limit the use of energy in office buildings.

For the teams in the southern hemisphere, a lot of the work is with sustainable zero-emission transport, from carts to electric vehicles. The Gigatonne Challenge helps the teams get electric vehicles for their work, so that they don't add to the problem.

Q: Ananya, where do you see this going? You've been there since the beginning stages. This is something that works at a grassroots level around the world, and it's coordinated out of a university. What sort of leadership will make this grow going forward so that it has a huge impact on the world?

I started out as a team member physically going to restaurants and food vendors, picking up bags of garbage, bringing them to compost, and actually doing the work. Now I'm helping other teams do that, because I have built a capacity, I've built some experiential knowledge.

I've spent time with communities who are experiencing this issue on a much larger scale. I think I have responsibility to support these communities, a to help them pick up skills.