LIVE GREEN, MAKE A DIFFERENCE !

Mrs Almitra H Patel, MS MIT

Member, Supreme Court Committee

For Solid Waste Management

almitrapatel@rediffmail.com98443 02914

www.almitrapatel.com

WHAT CAN I DO?

Saving the planet, saving the ozone layer seems a huge task, to be done by Governments or someone else.

Not true!

Each one of us can do our bit, and

it will all add up.

BEGIN HERE AND NOW…

• Save energy, so that we need less power generation and less greenhouse gases:

• Turn off lights and fans

• Switch off computers at night or when idle for long

• Keep airconditioners set at 25oC and in ‘sleep mode’ (10minutes on, 10 min. off)

GOOD HABITS DO HELP

Avoid waste of water and do not discard stored water, which in Bangalore is pumped 1000 m uphill from 100 km away.

Buy fruits in season, grown in your District, State or Country.

Buying food from half a world away wastes needless fuel, with needless emissions.

AVOID OVER-ILLUMINATION

• Decide to avoid over-bright lighting of homes, offices, streets and especially advertisement hoardings.

• Keeping cities bright today also means power cuts for the poor in villages and interrupted irrigation for farmers.

• Choose energy-saving options like LED lights.

BEGIN WITH YOUR HOME AND YOUR CAMPUS

MINIMISE WASTE

KEEP IT UNMIXED

UNMIXED DISCARDS ARE ALL USEFUL

MINIMISE YOUR NON-RECYCLABLE& HAZARDOUS WASTES AT SOURCE

Minimise styrofoam in your packaging

Be PVC-FREE ! Carefully review all items

Normal tubelights contain 20-40mg mercury. Replace them with low-mercury tube-lights (3-5

mg) or preferably CFLs or ideally LED lights.

Buy mineral water in reusable bulk carboys to refill small bottles and minimise PET discards.

Collect broken glass in hundis and donate or sell once a year for festival expenses. Or mix with concrete for plugging rat-holes effectively.

Mixed discards become useless Waste. Unmixed, each item is a resource.

WET food waste, raw+cooked: COMPOST IT

CLEAN DRY waste : CAN BE RECYCLED

INERTS like drain silt, road dust, debris: if clean, use to improve roadsides, lowlying land.

Many homes, institutions & industries havebecome zero-waste just by keeping theirwastes unmixed, esp plastic and inerts.

THERE’S NO SPACE FOR WASTE DISPOSAL. MINIMISE THE

WASTE!

WHY KEEP PLASTICS OUT OF WASTE? They are a major problem in composting

and need very costly machinery to remove

MAKE A PERSONAL COMMITMENT

Decide to keep plastics out of waste,

all your lives.

By example, persuade others to do so too.

Keep all plastics inside one big plastic bag, and when it is full donate it to a ragpicker or drop it off at a kabadiwala’s.

KEEPING WASTES UNMIXED IS EASY. MAKE IT A HABIT.

START THE HABIT IN SCHOOLS !

SHREDDED PLASTICS MAKE EXCELLENT BITUMEN ROADS

Added to hot stones, softenedplastics form a baked-onPrimer with excellent bondingto bitumen (tar, asphalt).

Road life doubles at no extracost as shredded plastics canreplace upto 8% of requiredbitumen: See CPCB’sPROBES/101/2005-06 =usagePROBES/122/2008-09=perf’ce

SHRED THERMOCOLE & UNWANTED MULTIFILMS FOR USE IN ROADS

OPEN WASTE BREEDS AGGRESSIVE STRAY DOGS

Keep waste off the streets.

Ownerless dogs which are not part of ahuman ‘family’ become feral, return towild ways and form hunting packs at night,attacking infants, joggers, two-wheelers.

CARE FOR OTHERS:DO NOT FEED STRAY DOGS!

Donate to a dog-pound if you wish to help.

GARBAGE ADDS HUGELY TO GREENHOUSE GASES

Mixed garbage is open-dumped countrywide.Rotting waste without air forms methane.This feeds fires on waste-dumps.Burning plastics are polluting, esp dioxins from PVC

In commercial areas, sweepings are burnt daily opposite their shops. Please object to stop this.

Burning leaves is banned and unnecessary. Prevent it where you can.

WASTE STABILISING IS A MUST as per MSW RULES

Unload waste in wind-rows, spray with bio – cultures, turn weekly, 1 to 4 times.

Dark humus forms in 2 months

Use it unsieved to cover oldwaste & grow flowers and non-food crops, or peelable foodslike maize or banana, as Rootcrops take up heavy metals.

This ‘urban agriculture’ will control dumpsite fires andcurb encroachments on unused dumps.

COMPOST WET WASTES IN BIO-BINSlike 30,000 families in Kochi, 40 per bin

COMPOST WET WASTES: WHY?

Not just to minimise waste needing disposal.

Compost and its humus are vital for reviving India’s soils which are depleted by over-use of chemical fertilisers.

Returning food waste to soils, as done since Vedic times, sustainably recycles nutrients and micro-nutrients.

It can counter scarcity of chemical fertilisers.

INDIA IS STARVED OF ORGANIC MANURES FOR SOIL CARBON

In the sixties, when Nitrogen was the Limiting Nutrient in soils, use of urea led tothe Green Revolution, but it has now usedup most of the soil Carbon: 4% down to 0.4%

Today, Carbon is the nutrient which limits crop productivity, farmer prosperity and our food prices.

There was a six million ton shortfall in organic manures in 1991, worse now.

I P N M IS THE ANSWER

Integrated Plant Nutrient Management is the combined use of city compost with chemical fertilisers.

Farmers using 50% of usual chemical fert. & buying city compost with balance funds incur no extra cost but many benefits:

Drought-proofing of newly-sown crops, less

waterings per crop, strong roots=less pests.

CITY COMPOST + CHEMICAL FERTILISERS WORKS WONDERS: 15-25% higher yields in all crops tried (left). This is paddy 6 weeks after transplanting.

ADOPT YOUR IMMEDIATE AREA:

Keep sand out of drains

Mera Aangan Saaf” policy keeps drains clean, locals happy, less desilting cost.

LIVE GREENKeep puja flowers out of rivers.

Keep idols out of lakes: Plaster of Paris does not dissolve, and heavy metals in paints are toxic to fish.

Instead, immerse small unpainted clay idols in a bucketof water and pour that around trees after 2-3 days.

Harvest rainwater in barrels or a tank from every terracedrain-spout. Or recharge groundwater by letting rainwaterfall onto 1-2 meter deep gravel-filled pits below rainspouts. Opt for Solar water-heating wherever possible.

RECYCLE YOUR ‘GREY WATER’

Use separate piping for

water from bathing,

clothes-washing, kitchen.

CANNA FLOWERS in

your garden can purify it

for non-potable re-use like

car washing & gardening.