Doomsday for Waste!

Recycling is no longer an option. It has to be a way of life. With the increasing amounts of waste generated, what better way to solve the waste-full problem at offices than organise an innovative recycle drive to reuse waste generated in offices, as a group activity.

'Doom's Day' held annually at Ion Exchange is certainly not as ominous as it sounds. All it involves is setting aside of time – a day, once a year, by all employees at a location to clear their work space of all the unwanted papers that have accumulated during the year. These unwanted papers are then recycled - the single-side printed papers are reused for printing drafts etc. or are bound into "rough" note pads.The double-sided used papers are shredded and used as packing.

Our Rabale office conducted its paper clearance drive, ‘Doom’s Day’ on July 17th, and guess what? They collected around 5000 kgs of unwanted paper that is now being reused.

Added benefits are a cleaner, better organised work space - and more space!

" Work is indeed worship, and by conducting the Doom’s Day drive, we brought about a clean and clear working area.. After all the office is where we spend almost 9 hours of a day and we all keep our places of worship pure!" said GK Ghadi, one of the organisers of 'Doomsday' at Ion Exchange, Rabale.

Charity begins at home. ‘Clear-ity’ begins at work.

An Inconvenient Truth – Film Review

‘An Inconvenient Truth’, a documentary by director Davis Guggenheim, has the former US Vice President Al Gore take the audience through what we call ‘Global Warming’ , exposing the myths & misconceptions about it. The fact that we are causing an irreparable damage to the earth becomes glaring especially when Gore shows a balance with earth on one side & gold on the other. Erroneously we choose the latter and how! Below are excerpts of reviews.

By Larry West in About.com Guide

http://environment.about.com/od/aninconvenienttruth/fr/goremovie.htm

It is hard to imagine anything more boring in concept than a documentary film of a politician presenting a slide show about a complex scientific subject. But this is no ordinary slide show, Al Gore is no ordinary politician, and An Inconvenient Truth is almost certain to be the most important film you will see this year—or any year.

In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore combines objective scientific evidence, humor and personal insights to create a powerful 80-minute exploration of what he clearly believes is the most critical issue of this or any other time in human history.

Gore has been a student of climate change since the 1960s. He knows his subject, he has done his homework, and he presents a compelling case for urgent and immediate action to turn back global warming.

Gore is clearly passionate about his subject. His mission is not merely to inform, but to motivate. He wants his audience not only to understand, but to take action. As Gore explained during a question and answer session at a preview of the film I attended in early May, "If you believe the science, then what else matters?"

By David Remnick in The New Yorker 
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/24/060424ta_talk_remnick#ixzz0sPZHXL93

“An Inconvenient Truth” is, to be perfectly honest (and there is no way of getting around this), a documentary film about a possibly retired politician giving a slide show about the dangers of melting ice sheets and rising sea levels. It has a few lapses of mise en scène. Sometimes we see Gore gravely talking on his cell phone—or gravely staring out an airplane window, or gravely tapping away on his laptop in a lonely hotel room—for a little longer than is absolutely necessary. And yet, as a means of education, “An Inconvenient Truth” is a brilliantly lucid, often riveting attempt to warn Americans off our hellbent path to global suicide. “An Inconvenient Truth” is not the most entertaining film of the year. But it might be the most important.

Superheroes

Don’t you just think about saving the day when watching Superman, Batman, Captain Planet - our superheroes? Wasn’t it always exhilarating to imagine ourselves as the neighbourhood friendly Spiderman? Watching these people transform from the usual, dull-looking, average humans to life-saving warriors of the planet makes us want to be more than what we are – someone extraordinary – someone different.  One that wants to fly and shut down a chemical dumping factory with special laser vision, save the ozone layer from depletion with a breath of air, use the mighty hero’s cape to protect little children from the effects of a tsunami – make a difference. Then we get back to our monotonous lives and the superhero dream dies a swift death.

The metaphorical change is indicative of our inner strengths and our desire to change the world as an individual.  Not too long ago, my mentor recounted her memories of nature trails, Baba Amte’s ashram, an orphanage and many other interesting tales that were rather unexpected and surprising. The stories left a huge impact on me and that was when the superhero in me was born. I wanted to work for a bigger cause, and I had vowed not to let this superhero in me die.

I began reading about real people who made real changes in the lives around them and came across names like Rachel Carson, Al Gore, Sunderlal Bahuguna, and many more. Carson’s book ‘Silent Spring’ was born out of sheer observation of birds in her garden, an inspirational story of how a childhood habit got the world to notice the disastrous effects of chemicals like DDT in our food chain. Sunderlal Bahuguna, deeply inspired by Gandhians, transferred his ecological perspective to save the falling oak trees, along with hundreds of locals by embracing the trees in what came to be known as the ‘Chipko Movement’. Al Gore traveled across countries to educate people about the astounding and yet widely ignored facts of global warming through his documentary movie ‘The Inconvenient Truth’. These people were a testimony to the fact that even a little can achieve much, motivating us to actively work towards saving our future.

Each one of us has a superhero within us. And we alone can decide whether he lives or dies. We need no Superman or Batman to save our dying planet, only our initiative to fight for it. As Captain Planet and the Planeteers would say, “The power is yours!”

- Ruchi Sanganeria

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?

The Native American Chief Seattle, of the Dwamish Tribe, made this powerful statement on the environment, cultural usurpation, and humanity, in 1854 at the time his people were being reservationalised by the US Government. It was his passionate plea to the inheritors of the earth that he loved so dear. Chief Seattle remains the Patron Saint of the environmental movement in USA. His speech in 1854, called by many the eco-sermon of the century, has been quoted by Joseph Campbell, the Dalai Lama and Al Gore and has become the rallying speech of Earth Day celebrations worldwide.

“The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. The Great Chief also sends us words of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him, since we know he has little need of our friendship in return. But we will consider your offer, for we know if we do not do so the white man may come with guns and take our land. What Chief Seattle says you can count on as truly as our white brothers can count on the return of the seasons. My words are like the stars - they do not set.

"How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

“Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and every humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. We are part of the earth and it is part of us.

“We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father's graves and his children's birthright is forgotten.

“There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to listen to the leaves of spring or the rustle of insect wings. But perhaps because I am a savage and do not understand - the clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lovely cry of the whip poor will or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night? The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind itself cleansed by a mid-day rain, or scented by a pinõn pine. The air is precious to the redman. For all things share the same breath - the beasts, the trees, and the man. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.

“If I decide to accept, I will make one condition. The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. I am a savage and I do not understand any other way. I have seen thousands of rotting buffaloes on the prairie left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beast also happens to the man.

“All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.

“One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover, our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.

“The whites, too, shall pass - perhaps sooner than other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. When the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by the talking wires, where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to the swift and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

“Our children have seen their fathers humbled in defeat. Our warriors have felt shame. And after defeat they turn their days in idleness and contaminate their bodies with sweet food and strong drink. It matters little where we pass the rest of our days - they are not many. A few more hours, a few more winters, and none of the children of the great tribes that once lived on this earth, or that roamed in small bands in the woods will remain to mourn the graves of the people once as powerful and hopeful as yours.

“We might understand if we knew what it was the white man dreams, what hopes he describes to his children on long winter nights, what visions he burns into their minds, so they will wish for tomorrow.
But we are savages. The white man's dreams are hidden from us. And because they are hidden, we will go our own way. If we agree, it will be only to secure the reservation you have promised”.

On Nature’s Trail

Living in modern concrete jungles, we tend to lose touch with nature. Forgetting that every living being is connected in nature’s web of life, that every little act that despoils the earth brings us closer to the brink of destruction. We need to re-establish our links with nature, to understand the importance of the environment and our role in protecting it. What better place to start on this journey of discovery, says Charmaine Sequeira, than on nature’s trail?  

Organised by the Bombay Natural History Society, the nature  trail through Sanjay Gandhi National Park (better known as Borivali National Park) was my first real close-up experience of nature’s ingenuity and engineering marvels - evident in every little life form that we encountered. 

Like the termite hill wherein the temperature is always maintained at a constant  - the termites rub their bodies together when it is cold to heat the inside, and stay comatose when it’s hot, to reduce the heat.  The caterpillar being eaten alive by parasites – they eat the fat and external body parts while  keeping off the heart, brain and other vital organs.  That way they keep their  victim alive, albeit in a coma, to let them feed on it.  Gruesome,  yes, but all  part of nature’s survival tactics.  Looking closer, it wasn’t  a leaf, but  an emerald green grasshopper – which when picked up immediately spewed a foul smelling liquid onto our  guide’s palm  - a defence mechanism to make its predator let go.

Glancing up,  there was a paper making factory –  a pagoda ant home on a tree.  Among the first “paper manufacturers”, these ants peel off the bark and construct a huge, black, papery home out of it.  Then, for hard-to-understand reasons of their own, they allow a certain species of woodpecker to lay its eggs in the home; they keep the eggs warm, let them hatch, do not attack the chicks  - which  then grow up and eat the ants!  The height of ingratitude  indeed!  Should anything else pass beneath the branch, the ants sense the heat from a possible predator, drop on to it and cover it with bites. 

And to keep them  and their food hoard perfectly  dry during the monsoons, the harvest ants construct a waterproof dwelling for themselves  –  with an  almost out of sight, deceptively small opening and  a water drainage system that is an engineer’s envy, it accommodates several  kilos of food grain stash!  Saving for a rainy day indeed!   

Observing nature at close quarters, it was remarkable how much I  learned about the “natural world” during that brief brush with nature, in  just a couple of hours and  1-1/2 kms on nature’s trail.

Visit www.bnhs.org and join their very affordably priced nature walks, nature camps and excursions to sanctuaries. If you have been a part of any such excursion, do write in your experience as a ‘Comment’ to this post and share your memorable moments with our readers.

Believe in the Power of One

You can make a difference if you take the effort to conserve. Just practising the tips will help you accomplish more than you can imagine. And the future belongs to the better informed & the better equipped.

Visit the sites listed below for more practical tips on how to save water. Share them with your friends and neighbours.

http://www.worldwaterday.org/
http://www.wateruseitwisely.com/100-ways-to-conserve/index.php
http://www.watersavingtips.org/saving.html

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/go-green/green-water/green-water-top-tips.html
http://www.thinkwater.act.gov.au/water_savingtips/water_saving_tips.shtml
http://eartheasy.com/live_water_saving.htm
http://www.thisland.illinois.edu/57ways/57ways_57.html

Spread the Word, Save the World

If you have done anything at home/in your housing society/ neighbourhood to spread awareness or act on environmental issues, do post a comment. Your example will inspire others to follow suit.

Technology for Sustainable Development

Believe it or not - written in 1999 by Shankar Ranganathan, Chairman, Ion Exchange (India) Ltd, but SO relevant today.



The Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as development that met the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. There are two parts to sustainability :

a) Enabling the environment sustain human and other forms of life by preventing further degradation of the environment and repairing the damage done to it;

b) Sustaining economic growth.

Everybody in the world suffers from the neglect of the environment and there must be few who continue to think that we are not part of nature and not subject to her laws. The capacity of the earth to absorb more waste or more energy is fast getting exhausted. Environmental damage has already caused the extinction of hundreds of species of plants and animals. Human beings themselves now face extinction. There is an urgent need to protect the water we drink and use, the air we breathe, the soil on which our plants and crops grow.

But while there is little need for discussion on the first aspect of sustainability, the second, which has been taken to be axiomatic, needs some comment.

Three quarters of the world’s population lack basic amenities, let alone the conveniences that affluent people now regard as necessities. These basic amenities must be provided if we are interested in a harmonious world built on cooperation and the affluent must share in the task of making this happen.

Human civilisation (if not all life on earth) will be destroyed within a few more generations if nothing is done to alter the present single-minded pursuit of money, ignoring the environmental degradation, growing unemployment and resultant social tensions. It could result in a plethora of goods cluttering the earth without human beings making them or capable of buying them. The economics of the future must give more importance to the quality of life because human beings cannot breathe, drink or eat money but they do need air, water and food to sustain life and these essential commodities are getting scarcer or more polluted.

A change is necessary in the present mindset of ever increasing sales and profit to adequate sustainable profit without inflation which would make growth unnecessary. Growth in all forms of life after maturity is incremental and ends with death and matter is recycled by the environment providing nourishment for new life. Uncontrolled growth, growth which cannot be arrested, is a form of cancer.

The world needs a change in quality to enable society to provide human satisfaction by environmentally sustainable means. Industry faces the challenge of proving that a clean environment and economic well-being are mutually compatible; adding value while reducing the use of resources and energy.

It is imperative to redefine growth to mean an improvement in the quality of life; not through the proliferation of goods but by an improvement of services. This is already happening in the market place due to the constraint on money. Services can reduce the proliferation of products which should be made to last much longer. It would make recycling easier and reduce the burden on the environment. No more built-in obsolescence! Energy saving systems already available can reduce energy use to a fourth and even a tenth of what is used. This would be equivalent to setting up four to ten times the number of power stations and avoiding the resulting pollution. It would give the world more time to change from the present form of economics which has ignored environmental and social costs and brought the world to the brink of ruin.

To quote from A Blueprint for Survival: “The activities of industrial man are having a serious effect on society. They can be shown to be leading to its disintegration and it can also be shown that such pathological manifestations as crime, delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism, mental diseases, suicide, all of which are increasing exponentially in our major cities, are the symptoms of this disintegration.”

Lester Brown in his book World Without Borders says: “Irrigation projects in tropical and sub-tropical countries expand the production of food, but they also create an ideal habitat for schistosmiasis, a rapidly debilitating disease now afflicting an estimated 200 million people. The rising incidence of emphysema is a by-product of man’s expanding energy consumption. Mercury poisoning comes from pesticides and industrial wastes. Lung cancer, bronchitis and reported cases of lead and cadmium poisoning, occur with increasing frequency. As of 1970, the victims of environmentally induced diseases number in the hundreds of millions, substantially exceeding the population of North America or Western Europe. New technologies are creating problems but not the institutions capable of solving them.”

Our problems remain unsolved, deteriorate even, mainly because education today is not related to living. As Alvin Toffler says in his book Future Shock: “Why must teaching be organised around such fixed disciplines such as English, Economics & Mathematics? Why not around stages of the human life cycle, a course on birth, childhood, adolescence, marriage, career, retirement, death? Or around contemporary social problems? And in India, I would add: Why not about the environment? About conservation? About agriculture? “What sort of education is this,” asks E.F. Schumacher in his book Small is Beautiful, “if it prevents us from thinking of things to be done immediately? What makes us think we need electricity, cement and steel before we can do anything at all? The really helpful things will not be done from the centre, they will not be done by big organisations, they can be done by the people themselves.”


Sustainable development requires new approaches in the use of technology. Technology that focuses on areas that will improve the environment (and the quality of people’s lives). Avoiding anything that converts pollution from one form to another, we must develop cleaner technologies that reduce the pollution of air, water and soil; technologies for recycle and conservation; for energy and resource reduction. Along with the development of alternative sources of energy such as from wind, solar, fuel cells, etc., there is an even more urgent need to increase the efficiency of all equipment used for transport, production, heating and lighting. According to Factor Four it is already possible to reduce energy use of most devices by a factor of four i.e., by 75%. This would be equivalent to increasing production four times and obviously help sustainable development without further damage to the environment.

 About the Author-
"I have been interested in nature since childhood and it was natural for me to become an environmentalist after reading three major books which made me keenly interested in the importance of the environment - Rachel Carson’s `Silent Spring’ which came out in the early `60s, The Ecologist’s : `A Blueprint for Survival’ and `Limits to Growth’ written for the Club of Rome by Meadows both published in `72 and `73" - Mr. G. Shankar Ranganathan.

A writer in one of his multi-talented persona, this is one of his many papers on environment related issues.