Composting

One of the many efforts which we can take is to make our own composting for our plants in the garden. There are a large no. of articles on the web which give a guideline about how to do it. Following those, I also got into making my own compost bucket. So I took a plastic bucket and started putting the daily organic waste in the bucket. This included banana skin, cauliflower remains, skin of peas, onion skins, leaves which I cut from other plants etc. and other kitchen waste which used to be thrown in the daily waste. The bucket looked like this -


After a couple of days I added some dry soil to this basket and added a little water to make the mixture a little moist. Then as days passed, I kept adding kitchen waste and water to the basket, occasionally mixing it to make the mixture homogeneous. After about a month, the process has led to a nice mixture of compost. Look at this -

I have used some of it now for my plants and hope it shows good results. I will surely put the results of this on this blog. But I urge all of you to try this at home and help reduce environment pollution. The kitchen waste which is deposited in dumping grounds and landfills gives rise to methane which is a very harmful greenhouse gas. If we spread this info to each and every house in our neighborhood, think of how much methane can be avoided. So spread the word fast and happy composting.

Rain water harvesting

I am aware that it has been a very long time since I posted on this blog. But the reason is that one of my friends who is in the US disheartened me in a big way. He is planning to put up a poultry farm in Hindustan. I just pricked him saying that livestock and poultry is a major contributor to global warming. And he replied saying that "though this is true, his not putting the farm will not stop global warming. Cars and a/c contribute a lot too, but are we going to quit using them? The biggest contributors are the huge huge factories, power plants and industries which are causing global warming and a change in those will start the reversing effect. Common man like you and me can't do much about it and should not worry about it. Don't get me started on this as I can go on and on forever." I was astounded. I had no argument. I had faced a counter-view for the first time and had no statistical data to prove myself at that moment. Also, I felt it was not worth putting the facts. But I had to be ready when I face this again. So I made some quick googles and found many many sites giving data which is evidence that transportation fuels are 15-20 % contributors to the green house gases. And this is a very big number, showing that we all can contribute to climate change in a big way.

So here I am with a fresh new post which has been pending since monsoon, and I had mentioned about the irony in my previous post. The irony was that it was raining heavily here in Mumbai, but there was water shortage and the municipal water supply was cut on the same day. All the daily washing had got stocked up and I could not digest the great irony. I decided to harvest the rain water. I tied a couple of buckets to my window and water started dropping in the buckets which was dripping off the sunroofs on the window.

And in just 5 minutes, both the buckets were full. I syphoned the water out into another bigger bucket and let the process to continue. And you would not believe that within a matter of 20 mins., I had harvested water enough for 1 full bucket load of washing. M was very thrilled and took up to wash the clothes. In another 20 mins, water was ready for washing the utensils and my mom took up the washing of utensils. The entire work got done in a matter of 1 hour and I was very very happy.

I started imagining if everyone of us does it daily in the monsoon, how much of water would be saved for days in summer when there is a shortage of water. Really, water is a very precious resource and it is the duty of every human being to save and conserve water. The way water conservation leads to slowing of global warming can be read here - http://www.weatherset.com/Explain/SlowGlobalWarming.html. I would like to request you all to suggest more ways of water conservation and your own experiences with it in the comments section below.

Update

After about 50 days past the WED, here is my first update on my efforts to help cool the earth. I religiously turn off my monitor every single time I leave my desk at office. It took only a few days of keeping it in mind to do it. But now it has become a mechanical process. My finger automatically goes to the power button on the monitor whenever I leave my desk. I have also requested the Admin dept. in my company to install the "Turn off monitor when not in use after 1 min." option on all the computers. Most designers use two monitors and hence are responsible for twice the harm.

Water conservation is another major issue which needs utmost attention. The article on Water Conservation in Wikipedia says:

Water conservation refers to reducing use of fresh water, through technological or social methods.

The goals of water conservation efforts include:

• Sustainability - To ensure availability for future generations, the withdrawal of fresh water from an ecosystem should not exceed its natural replacement rate.
• Energy conservation - Water pumping, delivery, and wastewater treatment facilities consume a significant amount of energy. In some regions of the world (for example, California ^[1].
• Habitat conservation - Minimizing human water use helps to preserve fresh water habitats for local wildlife and migrating waterfowl, as well as reducing the need to build new dams and other water diversion infrastructure.

These are enough reasons to conserve potable water. Recently, fire stations in Mumbai have decided to do rain water harvesting for the water needed to put off fires, instead of using potable water for the purpose. This is a very intelligent move. On my part, I already had a habit of turning off the tap while brushing (thanks to my mom). And there was an irony recently and I shall cover it soon with another post on Water Conservation. I also use my fish tank water to water my plants and it has proved to be a good manure.

Now the next efforts would be to prepare a compost pit for the plants and prepare a plan for rain water harvesting for my house in Yeoor. I already use the tea grains filtered out as a manure for the rose plant. And it has borne flowers.

Jaya and Vidhya, thanks for your comments. Vidhya, I really liked your efforts to take your own bags for grocery to save the plastic and paper. Here are some facts -

Plastic bags are not biodegradable. Even if they say they are, they do not decompose fully. Also the ink is made up of cadmium, and is highly toxic when it is released. Whereas paper bags are reusable and biodegradable. If your purchase is small don't take any bag, this alone could save hundreds of millions of bags. Bring a cloth bag when you shop, or use string bags.

Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

I request all the other readers to chip in their own efforts here in the comments section so that we all can learn some new ways to make the earth cool. And keep reading for more updates and pass on the blog to your friends.

Happy World Environment Day!!

I had been wanting to start a blog on global warming for quite some time now, but was not finding the right मुहूर्त for it may be. And, unknowingly, I found an article in TOI about the BMC having some special programs for the World Environment Day on the 5th of June. This was the best time to start a blog which I had been waiting for. I chose this title because Lord ShriKrishna himself was the architect of the rocky and barren land given to Pandavas, and transformed it into the best place on earth.

My prime intention for this blog is to have a collection of my efforts, thoughts or articles I find which I can implement in my daily life to put in my share to save the globe from warming further. The need spurted when I bought an A/c recently and felt very guilty for harming the environment. I thought I should do something to neutralize the harm I am causing to the environment, which is called carbon offsetting in the corporate world. My first idea was to plant trees every year as much as 1/1000 the cost of the a/c. e.g. if I purchase an a/c worth Rs. 10,000, I should plant 10 trees every year, simple isn't it? You all may have different ideas of such offsetting, and I beg to please let me know of those through comments on this blog.

We had a "Green Day" in our office today, where all were requested to wear any shade of green (though the actual % of people who did that was hardly 5% which shows the general enthu amongst public to care for the environment). We also circulated this email poster to show how we can be more eco-friendly by following 5 simple steps in office, and this can be done in any office.

Of this, turning off the monitor when not in use is something which can be done by all the pc users, be it office or home. The reason to do this is explained below -

	Did you know? The average desktop PC wastes nearly half of the energy it consumes as heat. This wasted electricity translates to higher electricity bills and increased greenhouse gas emissions.
	Fun Fact: Using power management features on your computer can save nearly half a ton of CO2 and more than $60 a year in energy costs.

What you can do: Making some simple changes to your computer’s power management settings is an easy and inexpensive way to make a difference in your environmental impact. With a few mouse clicks, your computer can be set to automatically go to “sleep” when it’s not in use.

I sincerely request all you readers to follow this simple yet powerful measure to put in our share for saving the globe. Leadership in saving global warming is a hot topic in the world politics today, and India is one of the leaders with the First LEED Platinum rated Green Building in the world built in Hyderabad in 2004. This is the CII business center and LEED is US's green building rating system. So, it is a proud thing to support the green effort for all Indians, and non-Indians too. Your own experiences in the form of comments are most welcome on this blog.
Happy World Environment Day!!