Solar-Powered Cart

India is home to about 10 million ironing carts. Vendors push these carts through towns, ironing clothes for a fee. Most vendors heat their irons by filling them with burning charcoal. Smoke from the charcoal pollutes the air and releases greenhouse gases that trap heat in Earth’s atmosphere, altering the climate. When Vinisha Umashankar, a teen from Tiruvannamalai, India, learned about this problem, she set out to find a better way to provide this service.

Vinisha began designing an ironing cart that runs on solar power. A panel on the cart’s roof would transform the sun’s energy into electricity and store it in a battery. The charged battery could then power an electric iron for up to six hours. Once the design was complete, Vinisha worked with engineers at the National Innovation Foundation in India to build a prototype, or testable model, of her cart.

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.”