Shreya Ramachandran Bio
Shreya Ramachandran is the founder of The Grey Water Project, a non-profit based in California. She is currently a junior at American High School, Fremont. When Shreya visited Tulare county in California, as a middle schooler for an Archery competition, she was shocked to meet so many people who were forced to purchase water for basic needs like drinking or bathing. Shortly after, Shreya visited her grandparents in India, where she met many farmers who had lost their crops due to water scarcity. Shreya returned home and spent two years researching water conservation methods before officially forming The Grey Water Project (GWP). GWP promotes the safe reuse of grey water – used water from sinks, showers, baths and the laundry and also water conservation through outreach, advocacy and educational curricula. Four years later, GWP has directly engaged 10,000 people worldwide, and Shreya continues to advance her grey water research.
In 2017, Shreya was awarded the President’s Environmental Youth Award and followed by The Gloria Barron Prize for young heroes in 2018. Her research received a grand award at the 2019 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and Shreya was named a Top 20 Global Finalist in the 2019 Google Science Fair and several other awards for her research. Shreya also received the 2019 Children’s Climate Prize, an international award given to one environmentalist each year. In November 2019, she launched an ambassador program, which already involves youth from various countries around the world. As Student Commissioner for the Sustainability Commission in Fremont, California, Shreya has proposed to add grey water systems into the 2020 climate action plan and build mandatory grey water pipelines for all new construction in California.
In the year ahead, Shreya plans to create additional policy proposals and expand her curriculum to more countries. Eventually, Shreya hopes water recycling will be a common practice worldwide. To know more about her work or be a part of her organization please visit www.thegreywaterproject.org or follow her on social media (FB & Instagram: The Grey Water Project, Twitter @shreya_rama).