Saahas in Bangalore

Written by Jodie / 13 March 2010 / Read Jodie's latest blog entries.

Saahas is a voluntary organisation in Bangalore, committed to finding solutions to solid waste management in the city. Saahas provide waste solutions to households and businesses and is supported by numerous organizations including The State Bank of India (SBOI) and Nokia India Pvt Ltd.
I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Wilma and Patma from Saahas who were extremely helpful and arranged for me to visit some of their projects. Not only have Saahas greatly improved working conditions for rag pickers but they also adhere to and promote the use of legislation such as the Solid Waste Management and Handling Rules. These Rules specify the correct use and disposal of waste and protects the people that have to work with it. It was reassuring to see that the workers at Saahas have the equipment they need to do their jobs – gloves, masks, aprons etc and that the working conditions were good. The organization and its staff are to be congratulated on a job well done.
K.N. Vitobha Nagar a supervisor showed me the waste segregation and composting units at The State Bank of India head office and the affluent Bangalore Club.

Unexpected Results in Auroville

Written by Jodie / 27 February 2010 / Read Jodie's latest blog entries.

Auroville is a “project in human unity”, an international community based just over the Pondicherry border in Northern Tamil Nadu. The once barren landscape is now lush and green thanks to the tree planting efforts of the first inhabitants and is home to over 1800 people from India and 35 other countries. The residents are involved in a range of activities including a cashless economy, environmental regeneration, organic farming , appropriate building technology and renewable energy.
I thought that Auroville would be the mecca of environmental awareness but that’s certainly not the case when it comes to waste management. Their visitors centre is over run by hordes of tourists every day yet the three recycling bins that they have are just used as general garbage bins.
Their environmental displays don’t mention anything about the way their waste is managed and the guide leaflet and map doesn’t list it’s Eco-service. There is rubbish everywhere and the surrounding Tamil villages are clogged with garbage. I should have known really as the waste management page on the website hasn’t been updated since 2003 when bullock carts where used to collect people’s rubbish.
We were able to visit the Eco-Service and Rajamanikkam and his colleagues were very helpful and obviously working hard.

Inspiring Goa

Written by Jodie / 27 February 2010 / Read Jodie's latest blog entries.

I have come to India to continue with a waste management project set up last year at Triund, a beautiful mountain camp in the Himalayas and a four hour hike from McLeod Ganj the home of the Dalai Lama. In a quest for inspiration, recycling info and knowledge I have decided to visit various environmental projects on my way from Goa back to the mountains.

India Climate Solutions put me in touch with Clinton Vaz, a truly inspirational guy and probably the nicest man you’ll ever meet.  He has set up numerous recycling projects and is most certainly not in it for the money. It’s his life and if this man can’t persuade people to go green then no-one can!

Students at IIT Bombay "Opt for Optimization"

Written by Caroline / 25 February 2010 / Read Caroline's latest blog entries.

At Azeotropy 2010, IIT Bombay's fest held in early March, students will be competing on effective Life Cycle Assessment - the analysis of the energy and resources used in the complete life cycle of a product or system. It will be an amazing learning for hundreds of students, to understand more about the power fo Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as a tool for evaluating true sustainability. As the organizers say, "By this competition, we aim to encourage the use of LCA as a tool for corporate decisions as well as governmental policy-making in India."

The exact challenge is: "You have to carry out a Life Cycle Assessment of the "Production of ammonium nitrate from Natural gas" to calculate the total energy consumption of the process and make a poster for the same. System Boundaries are from Cradle to gate i.e. from raw material production to factory gate, and does not include the impacts of further supply chain or distribution mechanism. You have to estimate "energy consumption per unit production" that have incurred (directly or indirectly) during the process.

Ennovent Competition: share your idea to provide energy to India's Rural Poor

Written by Anna da Costa / 24 February 2010 / Read Anna da Costa's latest blog entries.

Do you know a solution to provide energy to India's poor?

Do you want to get a reward of USD 3,000?

Most of India's population has no access to affordable, let alone clean energy. Help us find in India and around the world proven, for-profit solutions that can meet some of the critical energy needs of India's poor. ennovent will invest up to USD 500,000 in the Solver to incubate or scale the winning enterprise in India and give a reward of USD 3,000 to the Connector.

ennovent invites you to participate in the Challenge by submitting Solutions and nominate Solvers online at http://www.ennovent.com
Deadline is March 31, 2010.

Climate Solutions Tour in the Philippines Sets Off in Solar Car!

Written by Caroline / 24 February 2010 / Read Caroline's latest blog entries.

Sikat, the solar carWe've just found out that the Solar Car Tour in the Philippines has launched! Follow them online on facebook or check back here as we share some of the media they've created! We got the following incredible email from Vince Perez, the former Minister of Energy in the Philippines, head of WWF Philippines, and an Alternative Energy global guru. He wrote:

We finally did a similar project to Caroline's and Alexis' Climate Solutions Tour in India.

We have formed a corporate consortium and built a 100% solar power car dubbed “Sikat” (rays of the sun) in partnership with a local De La Salle University.   Sikat is currently on a one month national road show from south to north of the entire Philippine archipelago, visiting a total of 14 engineering schools in 14 different cities around the country.

Mountain Waste Management Solutions

Written by Caroline / 15 February 2010 / Read Caroline's latest blog entries.

During the late summer of 2009, two expeditions took me north into India, once to Himachal Pradesh to visit Spiti Valley travelling through the Rohtang Pass, "the end of the inhabitable world", and once to the famous Valley of the Flowers in Uttarakhand. In both places, I met creative and passionate individuals committed to changing the waste cycle - which otherwise sends loads of plastic waste from urban centers to meet tourist demands for bottled water and packaged foods up in the mountains, where it is left as an unfortunate legacy of the tourist recognition of the beauty and sacredness of the mountains.

I visited the Manali recycling center, and saw their waste compression unit. Waste is compressed into lower volume, higher density blocks which can be brought down to major cities to be recycled. In other areas, communities are attempting to manage waste in their own way.

Maurya Sheraton's Waste Management Solutions

Written by Caroline / 12 February 2010 / Read Caroline's latest blog entries.

The Maurya Sheraton has been composting its waste for over two years, processing almost 600 kilos of food waste generated daily from the six restaurants and hundreds of rooms inside the hotel, along with about 200 kilos of plant and yard waste daily, turning it all into high grade fertilizer. In doing so, the hotel has been able to eliminate all external chemical fertilizer use in the hotel's expansive lawns and has gotten international publicity for its work.

In discussions with the hotel's administration, we learned that they have been able to reduce costs dramatically by producing their own fertilizer, and the costs of the composting unit - about 10 lakh, or 20,000 USD - was paid for within the first year of usage. The excess fertilizer generated is donated to "The Ridge" - the forest lung of Delhi that has one portion running opposite the Maurya. The gardens alongside the road are all maintained by the Maurya at low cost due to donated compost.

Most interestingly, this entire unit takes up a very small amount of space and requires only two staff to manage the entire system. Both staff people are completely deaf, and were trained by Maurya Sheraton and Excel (the technology provider) to fulfill their roles using sign language.

Infosys Solar Golf Cart

Written by Caroline / 10 January 2010 / Read Caroline's latest blog entries.

In the summer of 2008, I spent three months with Infosys working on a number of projects with the Infosys team. Recently, I found this video of the solar golf cart designed while there: powered by both the building-integrated solar panels on the roof of the cart, and powered when plugged into the grid.

Taking Gujarat’s embroidered garments to international stores

Written by Kabir Arora / 04 January 2010 / Read Kabir Arora's latest blog entries.

 Hansiba , the first rural artisan of SEWA, talks to Madhur Tankha about her life and how she has been instrumental in encouraging rural women to earn their living through traditional skills.

She is the face behind the thousands of traditional garments that have now found their way from villages to international retail stores. Hansiba, the first rural artisan of Self Employed Women’s Association, has been instrumental in encouraging rural women to earn their living through traditional skills.

A master of 16 different types of embroideries, this nonagenarian grandmother grows her own cotton, spins her own yarn and does her own embroidery in Datarana village in Gujarat. She is held in greet esteem by the new generation that looks up to her for guidance.