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.