As a pediatrician, I am always especially very proud of youth and teens who are inspiring courage, leadership, and dynamic change for our collective communities. My next guest, Aditya Mukarji is doing this everyday as an environmentalist and climate activist from Gurgaaon, near New Delhi. He is a 16 yo who has made it his quest to help eliminate single-use plastics, raising awareness and taking action. He started with a modest goal to eliminate the use of 50,000 plastic straws, but in the last few years, by persuading commercial establishments to go plastic free, he’s managed to actually avert the use of more than 28 million single-use plastic objects. Aditya’s environmental leadership and activism have been recognized by the United Nations and he was selected by Action for Nature (AFN) as a 2020 International Young Eco-Hero. I caught up with him recently for a conversation and I asked him about how his childhood experiences developed a consciousness of environmental awareness.