1. LIVE GREEN, MAKE A DIFFERENCE !
Mrs Almitra H Patel, MS MIT
Member, Supreme Court Committee
For Solid Waste Management

2. 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.

3. 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)

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. BEGIN WITH YOUR HOME AND YOUR CAMPUS
MINIMISE WASTE
KEEP IT UNMIXED
UNMIXED DISCARDS ARE ALL USEFUL

7. 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.

8. THERE’S NO SPACE FOR WASTE DISPOSAL. MINIMISE THE WASTE!
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 have
become zero-waste just by keeping their
wastes unmixed, esp plastic and inerts.

9. WHY KEEP PLASTICS OUT OF WASTE
WHY KEEP PLASTICS OUT OF WASTE? They are a major problem in composting and need very costly machinery to remove

10. 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.

11. KEEPING WASTES UNMIXED IS EASY. MAKE IT A HABIT.

12. START THE HABIT IN SCHOOLS !

13. SHREDDED PLASTICS MAKE EXCELLENT BITUMEN ROADS
Added to hot stones, softened
plastics form a baked-on
Primer with excellent bonding
to bitumen (tar, asphalt).
Road life doubles at no extra
cost as shredded plastics can
replace upto 8% of required
bitumen: See CPCB’s
PROBES/101/ =usage
PROBES/122/ =perf’ce

14. SHRED THERMOCOLE & UNWANTED MULTIFILMS FOR USE IN ROADS

15. OPEN WASTE BREEDS AGGRESSIVE STRAY DOGS
Keep waste off the streets.
Ownerless dogs which are not part of a
human ‘family’ become feral, return to
wild 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.

16. 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.

17. 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 old
waste & grow flowers and non-
food crops, or peelable foods
like maize or banana, as Root
crops take up heavy metals.
This ‘urban agriculture’ will
control dumpsite fires and
curb encroachments on
unused dumps.

18. COMPOST WET WASTES IN BIO-BINS like 30,000 families in Kochi, 40 per bin

19. 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.

20. INDIA IS STARVED OF ORGANIC MANURES FOR SOIL CARBON
In the sixties, when Nitrogen was the
Limiting Nutrient in soils, use of urea led to
the Green Revolution, but it has now used
up 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.

21. 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.

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

23. ADOPT YOUR IMMEDIATE AREA:
Keep sand out of drains
Mera Aangan Saaf” policy keeps drains clean, locals happy, less desilting cost.

24. LIVE GREEN Keep 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 bucket
of water and pour that around trees after 2-3 days.
Harvest rainwater in barrels or a tank from every terrace
drain-spout. Or recharge groundwater by letting rainwater
fall onto 1-2 meter deep gravel-filled pits below rainspouts.
Opt for Solar water-heating wherever possible.

25. 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.