General Gyan

More & more stores are encouraged to use bags made of recyclable paper, cutting down on plastic bags. Customers are also encouraged to get their own bag.

Facts:

• Plastic bags cost about a paisa 50 each, paper costs about a Rs.2 and compostable bags can run as high as Rs.10 each.
• The bags also must be segregated from regular plastic, making recycling efforts more difficult.

Meanwhile:

• Paper bags generate 70 percent more air pollutants and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags, according to the Environmental Agencies.
• This is because four times as much energy is required to produce paper bags and 85 times as much energy is needed to recycle them.
• Paper takes up nine times as much space in landfills and doesn't break down there at a substantially faster rate than plastic does.

Public education campaigns about littering and recycling can help more than ineffective bans on products that are used every day by billions of people worldwide.

...Anand Varadaraja

Saahas - The Waste Management People

As you drive around Bangalore you get to see lot of things – Beautiful Trees, Buildings under construction, heavy traffic & above all lots of garbage.

Talking about garbage we still see rag pickers segregating the waste to pick up the best of the scrap, however in this exercise they spread the garbage more. Some years ago many localities decided to adopt home garbage pickup model – where the garbage is collected from the doorstep instead of the person throwing it in the garbage bin. This works fine for a residential locality but the commercial or the areas where the pickup is not adapted still suffers. Bangalore generates 3,000 tonnes of waste everyday from households and commercial establishments. Around 50% of this waste is organic. The balance is accounted for by inorganic and hazardous waste.

Bangalore City Corporation has come up with a new scheme where they will pay plastic waste Rs.6 per kg directly to whoever gives it at their collection point. The plan is to set up around 120 collection points.

Saahas is a Bangalore based voluntary organisation are committed to finding solutions to problems related to solid waste management in the city. Saahas is ready to adopt one of the 120 collection points with the support of the Bangalore City corporation to make JP nagar 6th phase a plastic free zone. The initiative plan is being drafted & is being presented to the Bangalore City commissioner soon.

Saahas also work with Corporates on waste management. Project Satyam – they are composting their organic material in the same campus. They also work with Lalbagh Botonical garden on the same purpose.

Citizens E-Waste Recycling Initiative
Over the last two years, Saahas has worked closely with the Hazardous Waste Management, Programme Karnataka (HAWA), to study the various issues related to generation of e-waste as also its flow, recycling and final disposal.

Bangalore generates around 4,00,000 dry cell batteries from households and commercial establishments. Earlier there was no possibility of recycling this material safely. However, E-Parisaraa has come forward to ensure safe recycling and disposal by retrieving the metal and plastic components which in turn are recycled into secondary products. The hazardous content is then extracted and stored for disposal in the hazardous waste facility which is currently being set up close to Tumkur, near Bangalore.

Saahas is working in partnership with WeP Peripherals and E-Parisara. They have setup the first ever city wide collection programme for household e-waste like batteries, cds & floppies. One of the centers is in the State Bank of India branch. They have also setup these collections points in more than 20 schools around Bangalore. Hope this effort really pays of in making a bangalore a better place.
For more information check www.saahas.org

As Imelda Marcos Quotes “People say I'm extravagant because I want to be surrounded by beauty. But tell me, who wants to be surrounded by garbage?”

... Anand Varadaraja

The COMPOSTABLE Water Bottle.

At last my first post on this blog :-)

Water: A common chemical substance that is essential to all known forms of life. We all know the importance of it, I need not explain more.

I still remember 10 years ago people used to talk “who will buy water? When we get it for such a cheap price”, but life has changed today. Day in & out we buy water without a second thought. Quality is what we look at. The supposed to be corporation clean tap water is made to run through all kinds of Water purifiers before drinking at homes. But the point I am driving today is not about water it the way it is sold.

Packaged water in India is sold in Plastic bottles in all kinds of sizes starting from ½ liter, 1 liter & 2 liters.

Municipal solid waste in India contains 1-4 per cent by weight of plastic waste. India’s rate of recycling of plastic waste is the highest (60%) in the world as compared to other countries (China 10%, Europe 7%, Japan 12%, South Africa 16% and USA 10%) but is a much unorganized sector.

Today I want to talk about this wonderful organization called "Belu Water". This is a UK company providing mineral water in the UK. They are first company to provide UK's first COMPOSTABLE bottle made of corn and their profits go to clean Water projects in UK, Mali & India right now. They plan to take up projects similar to this around the world. They are also a Penguin Approved - They are anti-Global Warming.

To talk about their Bio-bottles - they are made from corn but could equally well be made from potatoes, rice, beetroot, bio-mass or pretty much any carbohydrate or sugar. The corn goes through a fermentation and distillation process similar to making corn whiskey and is reduced to a monomer called lactic acid (which you can also find in ice cream and pickles). This lactic acid is then spun, linked into polymer chains and molded into bottles.

Even though their bottle is compostable their cap is not. They request to reuse the same.

Read more about them on http://www.belu.org/

I wait for their launch in India & hope it makes a difference.

As Ed Rendell quotes “Bottled water was, at best, a temporary solution for this community,” but we have made it now a permanent solution.

...Anand Varadaraja