India is home to about 10 million ironing carts. Vendors push these carts through towns, ironing clothes for a fee. They heat irons by burning charcoal. When Vinisha Umashankar was 12, she saw an ironing cart vendor throw burnt charcoal into the street in her hometown in southern India. She learned that burning charcoal releases pollution into the air. So she set out to design a solution.
Over six months, Vinisha designed an ironing cart powered by solar energy, which doesn’t produce pollution. Solar panels on the cart’s roof can power the iron for six hours. Vendors need to move around, so Vinisha designed the cart to attach to a bicycle. Engineers helped her build a prototype.
In 2021, Vinisha’s cart was a finalist for the Earthshot Prize, an international award for projects that help the environment. “Environmental issues are real,” says Vinisha, now 15. “They are not someone else’s problem.”