Schools in shipping containers | Fusion - WeRIndia

Schools in shipping containers

Schools in shipping containers

This is the era of recycling and innovative thinking. Aadhan, a Delhi-based social enterprise is following exactly that. The startup uses a method never heard of to create schools and other structures for those who need it.

Founded by Nikhil Dugal and Akshat Goel, Aadhan builds classrooms and many more things using old useless shipping containers.

Where there are many people who have no homes or underprivileged children who do not get education, Aadhan helps build them what they need using shipping containers.

According to Aadhan team, these type of structures have many advantages over traditional brick-and-mortar ones.


One of the founders, Nikhil, used to work in the development sector. He was interested in starting a rural enterprise. He along with his partner Akshat wanted to develop budget private schools for rural areas.

At that time, they saw container spaces in South Africa which triggered their idea. That was the beginning of their non-profit initiative.

The duo worked on ways to use the containers. After months of research they found that containers were already being used in India for temporary offices of construction sites.

The problem was that they used new containers and were built from scratch making them not at all conservative. The containers also lacked contamination measures making them harmful.

Schools in shipping containers

Schools in shipping containers

The duo worked on those issues and in 2015, they started their eco-friendly approach to containers.

They take old containers as the base material. It is refurbished and cleaned by the Aadhan team.

They use sustainable materials like oriented strand box (OSB) and insulation packages built from recycled tetra packs. The containers are easy to move and faster to build.

Every container they use prevents around 1.3 tonnes of Corten Steel from going to waste.

They only use about 400KWh of energy for making these where it takes 8000 kWh for scrapping a container.


Image Reference: TheBetterIndia

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