Sheikh Iraj  

How did you become an environmental activist? What motivated you?

In 2010, I was studying Anthropology at Dhaka University. Back then, I used to tutor school students. One day, I asked one of my students about his thoughts about gardening. He replied that gardening was the job of a gardener. I was a bit disappointed with his answer. So, I decided to present him with some of his favourite plants. Soon, there were fruits in the plants I gave him. My student became really excited and motivated about gardening. Then his school teachers requested me to give a small presentation on rooftop gardening at their school. For the presentation, I searched the internet and gathered more information. After my presentation, many parents started to contact me. They wanted to have their own rooftop gardens and some of them started giving me orders. I used to buy plants and deliver those to their houses. I started to receive a lot of orders. Then I realised that I could turn that into something more meaningful. So I founded Green Savers, a non-profit organisation that works with urban gardening. I hired one staff and asked some of my friends to join me. My father is a farmer and I always enjoyed gardening, I believe that motivated me to take gardening up more seriously.  

Please tell us about the activities of Green Savers.

We help with the setup and maintenance of rooftop gardens. There are about 45 lakh (4.5 million) rooftops in Dhaka city, but only 2 per cent has any greenery on them. In Dhaka, you will find 17 places named after trees which used to grow there, like Kalabagan and Taltola. We are planting the same kind of trees there for which those areas were famous for. We have different types of programmes, like ‘Oxygen Bank’ and ‘Mobile Plant Clinic’. We have built ‘oxygen’ banks, a box for spontaneous fund collection for planting trees in 400 schools across the country. We have two mobile plant clinics in Dhaka. We have planted trees on 2,300 rooftops in the city. Besides these, we are working on a number of other projects with different national and international organisations, like FAO, UNDP, ActionAid, Save the Children, Australian Aid, Practical Action, Water Aid, etc. For our work, we received the Prime Minister’s Award for contributing to the environment in 2013, Joy Bangla Youth Award in 2015 and Che Guevara Youth Award in 2016.  

What are the benefits of roof gardening?

There are two primary benefits of rooftop gardening. First, you are producing oxygen, and second, you are able to grow fresh vegetables and vegetation.

Is roof gardening expensive?  

No, rooftop gardening is not that expensive. You can build water collection tanks for water and use your kitchen waste as fertiliser. We help people with setting up all that.   

Please tell us about your future plans.

I never thought I would be doing this kind of work. Indeed, my work has changed my life. I love my work and I want to continue this. I want to make Dhaka green again.