Humans are the only species who do some irreversible damage to our environment. Every other living creature helps maintain the food chain and the ecosystem except us. 

Most nations in Europe have already taken steps to ensure that our waste is not dumped into the environment. They take steps to separate the garbage and wherever possible recycle it for the betterment of mankind. They even have laws which forbid people from dumping electronic waste into landfills. Similarly companies are restricted from using  certain chemicals and heavy metals like lead in their products. These are being done to prevent ground water contamination.

What do we do with our waste?

Image Courtesy : jasco.com.au

Most people do not encourage separation of waste material at home or even collect garbage in an effective manner. Food leftovers, vegetable waste is all combined with other garbage and piled into the plastic containers which are found in streets or on the streets too.

What we try through this post is to try and inculcate some common details, which if followed can reduce the amount of waste disposed from one’s home, help save our nation’s resources and protect the environment which has to be inhabited by our children and grandchildren.

• Encourage use of dust-bins in all rooms of home, not just the balcony or kitchen. This alone would lead to selective separation of junk in your home. If this is followed, almost exclusively the kitchen waste bin would have only food related waste items , living rooms have probably lot of paper wastage and so on.
• Use waste-bin disposable plastic bags which are available in leading supermarkets. These plastic bags are designed to disintegrate easily and would not pollute the environment. Also using such bags would keep your bins clean and make collecting junk easier.
• Dispose waste in two separate bags from home and please tie the top of these bags. This would eliminate foul smell on the streets and also keep the flies and rodents in check.
• We Indians already believe in “Raddiwala” , so recycling is not an issue for  paper , glass and plastic bottles. Make sure you do not throw as much of paper as possible. Try to give them off to these shopkeepers.
• For those who have a small patch of garden or so, use the vegetable waste as a composite for the plants. It is an excellent nutrient and helps you grow your own mini vegetable mart ! Check out this post and this from Sudarsan.
• Do not dispose batteries and similar material onto regular garbage. If possible when you are staying in an apartments, try to have a common box to throw batteries and electronic waste. These can by picked up separately by the cleaning agencies and handled appropriately.
• Teach Young children the value of recycling and wastage. They are the next generation who would make a huge difference.

Try to think of the streets as part of your home. No one in their right mind would dirty their homes right?

Hope this post encourages you to handle waste more efficiently at your homes. Your comments and criticism would help us improve our content.

have a great weekend.

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Check this link for information on how much emissions you are personally responsible for. The average figure for Americans is 7.5 tons every year. Now if you want to offset this by some carbon absorbing activity, pretty much the only thing you can do is to plant more trees. Unfortunately, the average tree can absorb only one ton of emissions in its lifetime (and that lifetime is usually very long, which means the offset is not done in the present time but in the future).

This leaves really leaves us in a corner as far as turning carbon neutral goes, leave alone the dreams of carbon negative. One has to plant something like 10 trees every year one is alive to offset our present modern lifestyle! This is too much to ask for, considering the fact that most people don’t have enough land to plant that many trees for even couple of years. Besides, ensuring that those trees grow correctly for the next 5-10 years is probably too paintstaking a task.

The other option is to drastically reduce our travels & power consumption patterns. However, even if we were to do that I doubt whether the 7.5 ton figure will more than halve, which leaves us with the same problem.

So the only way out appears to be in the use of clean energy like from wind turbines (nuclear as well?) and in the development of vehicles with hybrid fuels or biofuel. Indian market is not yet giving people these options, unlike in US where both these options are already being marketed. Let’s hope we catch up soon. 

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In an earlier post, we had briefly touched upon some activities that one can do in order to keep one’s home as environment friendly as possible. At that time, we didn’t know the exact carbon emissions due to household activities and had hoped to research it later. Well, now we have come across some interesting statistics at http://www.climatecrisis.net, which I am summarising below.

It is basically 9 simple things ordinary people can do in their day-to-day lives to help combat global warming.

1. Change lights - Replace regular light  bulbs with CFL bulbs. One such move alone will save 150 pounds of Carbon Dioxide in a year.
2. Drive less- One pound of CO2 saved for every mile you don’t drive. We don’t have to cut down on our travel; rather we should use car pooling, bikes or even buses more than usual.
3. Recycle more - Recycle 50% of household waste will save 2400 pounds per year. Not sure whether we can recycle stuff easily in India. Anyone with knowhow on this, please feel free to comment.
4. Check tires frequently - Proper inflation of tires save 3% on mileage. 1 gallon of gasoline saved means 20 pounds of CO2 emissions saved.
5. Use less hot water - It takes a lot of energy to heat hot water. So use less of it by installing a low flow showerhead (350 pounds of CO2 emissions saved in a year) and washing your clothes in cold or warm water (500 pounds of  CO2 saved in a year)
6. Avoid products with lot of packaging - 1200 pounds of CO2 is saved by cutting garbage by 10%. This probably assumes some garbage disposal mechanism requiring power consumption. Again, unsure whether this is true for India as well.
7. Adjust your thermostat - If you place it 2 degrees from its usual spot, it will save 2000 pounds of CO2 in a year.
8. Plant trees - A single tree will absorb one ton of CO2 from the atmosphere in its lifetime. I know.., that figure seems dissappointingly low compared to the earlier emission figures. And to think, trees are such huge creatures.
9. Turn off electronic devices - Turning off your television, computer etc. when you are not using them will save 1000s of pounds in emssions every year.

There now.. we can’t claim ignorance about what we have to do, so that earth remains habitable.

Err.. hope that didn’t sound too fanatical…

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• Indian Plants : Easy, Aesthetic and Useful

I have tried a few garden plants at different places, please adapt my experience to your space & location.

Image Courtesy: homegrownwisconsin.com

Tomato/Coriander/Tulsi/Green Beans/Ginger/Turmeric/Yam/Guvar/Chilli - All these respond well to Indian weather conditions, and as long as you provide some sand in a pot, and get good amount of sun-light they yield good results without much pest attacks.  Green beans, Guvar, Chilli and Tomatoes should be planted 2 months before summer.

Cabbage, Cauliflower, Lettuce, Potatoes: Grows well in cool climate only.   Need loamy and wet soil. Need protection from frost and hail, best to be grown 3-4 months before summer.

Curry leaf, Plantain, Lemon, Sweetlime - Need clay type soil, with some amount of sun-light, but easy to take care.  Plant it before rainy season, to reduce your work. 

Bittergourd, Snakegourd, Sweetpotato, Grapes - All these are climbers, that grow quite well in Indian conditions.   For Grapes, pick local varieties for pest resistance.   Snakegourd needs a horizontal mesh, while the rest can take up vertical or horizontal mesh.   You can harvest 3-5 kgs of grapes with a single plant, that can be raised in a 1sqfeet land-space.   However grapes, like pepper needs additional plants in the vicinity as they need some level of ground cover near their roots.  Other than grapes and pepper , other plants have to be planted soon after the rainy season, so that they start yielding in Spring and Summer.   You can choose late spring planting too, but you may spend more water.

Roses, Groundnuts, Karamani (black eyed white peas), Leek, Radish, Onions - Respond well to loamy, red-soil.   In fact all the potted plants on the first line can be raised on this kind of land.   Groundnuts need to be harvested shortly after their flowers start withering.   Good to plant them shortly after the rainy season.

Pumpkins & Potatoes - If you do Vermi composting (organic wastes from the kitchen with live earthworms and sand), you can throw any seed on it and can be assured that you can get a healthy sapling.   Note that healthy saplings replanted elsewhere have a 80% higher success rate than direct sowing.   Anyway vermi composting locations are as such good places to plant pumpkins, and all you need to do is direct the climber to your nearest terrace or shed, and you will see lots of pumpkins.    In villages pumpkins thrown over rubble has seen 30-40 pumpkins within 3-4 months, provided the weather is cooperative (plant towards the end of the rainy season, so that harvesting happens around spring time to early summer).

Image Courtesy : Google Images

There should be more vegetables and fruits, you may want to try for your kitchen garden. 

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Seeing places abroad as well as commercial establishments locally, influenced a lot of Indians to move away from fruit & flower bearing trees to landscaped gardens with exotic grass, palms and evergreen shrubs.    Lets analyze this in detail and see what works well for us.

 Image Courtesy: www.casabaan.com

Korean Grass

Though Korean grass does not need periodic trimming it need a lot of water, periodic manuring, as well as well prepared landscape. Arugam Pull(used in prayers to Sri Ganapathy), is a versatile local variety that grows well without much personal attention, and does not need big investments nor maintenance.  A big plus with this grass is that it is soft and cool to sit on.  Crab grass from Malaysia or US ($10 seed+manure packet can cover 1000 sq feet) consumes less water, but needs periodic trimming to maintain the green patch.

Ornamental plants for landscaping

1. Ixora - This is a shrub endemic to India, and very popular in Europe as well.   Ixora has thin stalks with star like flowers that comes as a bunch (as a child we used to take one by one and suck out the little honey out of these flowers).  It comes in colours such as white, pink and coral red.   It can be maintained as a small shrub or can be allowed to grow as  a tree.   A bunch of flowers remain fresh for at-least a week and adds a mild fragrance to the breeze.   With this plant you will have tiny bees and butterflies visiting your home.  The flowers can also be harvested to string garlands.  This is a perennial, so you can see flowers throughout the year. A picture is shown below.

Image Courtesy: www.tradewindsfruit.com

 2. Turmeric, Ginger, Chitharathai, Yam - All these plants have a similar look and grows very well in our climate.    Suited for planting on the side of the pathways.  These plants can be used for culinary and medicinal purposes.

3. Climbers - Sweet potato (Velli Kizhangu), Jasmine (Nitya Malli) are excellent climbers that need very little soil, manure and water, but offer extensive coverage.   Nitya Malli flowers daily throughout the year.

4. Flowering plants - Chrysanthemum (Samanthi), Bhadrakshi, Jasmine (Gundu Malligai), Kanakambaram, Sampangi are nice flower bearing plants.  My pick is Bhadrakshi for landscaping as it is easy to grow and is a perennial.

5.Exotics - If you have a large home with huge grass lawns, adding a lotus/lily pond would be very appealing.   However you may have to populate the pond with some fishes and frogs to get rid of mosquitoes.

6.Trees - Arecanut (Paaku), Jackfruit (Palamaram), Gooseberry (Nellikai), Plantain/Banana, Casuarina, Bamboo, Teak, Badam are the best picks for trees that add to landscaping value as well as good utility value for homes.  Mangoes, Coconuts, Sappotta, Maghizamaram, Shenbagham are very nice trees too, but may not necessarily fit into a landscaping profile.

7. Plants for remote spots - You may have noticed hard-to-reach points in your building that would look nice with some plants.  At such places Perandai (Cactus variety, but can withstand downpours as well), Aloe Vera (Katrazhai) can grow well without letting in pests.

 It is a long Indian tradition that food itself is treated as medicine, so lets look at landscaping the Indian way: Easy, Aesthetic and Useful.

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