LIVE GREEN, MAKE A DIFFERENCE ! Mrs Almitra H Patel, MS MIT Member, Supreme Court Committee For Solid Waste Management almitrapatel@rediffmail.com 98443 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.

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.

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

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, 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/101/2005-06 =usage PROBES/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 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.

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 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.

COMPOST WET WASTES IN BIO-BINS like 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 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.

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 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.

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.