Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Indigenous but GREEN ways of celebrations



While visiting a village of Thrisoor district of Kerala during February 2009 I found the villagers using indigenous and eco friendly practices while decorating their houses for any celebrations or welcoming people during any programme. The palm leaves were cut finely and folded to make nice geometrical shapes and used to make hanging Toranams around the place . Similarly the paper flags of various colors were fixed on bamboo sticks and inserted artistically on the stem of banana and this was placed in the centre of house.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

How real Eco- friendly we are? USE OF PLASTIC IN DAILY LIFE



           Election campaign or Plastic campaign ?

      Such scenes are quite common in cities and towns

It has become quite common to preach and cite examples of eco friendly initiatives in day to day parlance. This phenomenon is of universal occurrence whenever there is any official programme /function related to amelioration and protection of environment . The most puzzling aspect in such matter is that we as a citizen or a true nationalist always forget to do our bit whether as an individual or as a community. Use of plastic in our daily life is one of such activities which can be of immense help to protect the environment if used judiciously. Whether it is a purchase of vegetables from local Subziwala or grocery from Big Mall we always prefer or even ask as a right for polythene bags. If you remember your olden days when you never forget to carry a hard perforated basket of plastic while going for market or your local grocer or general store wala used to give you articles in paper bags mostly made of brown paper which we used for putting cover on our books . Now a days even those brown papers are covered with polythene.

Since this is the Election season for out great democratic country the use of plastic has increased many folds mainly for printing of flags, banners, caps which are not only cheap but very easy to produce. One of the biggest sufferer of plastic revolution is the community of local painters in every nook and corner of country which otherwise used to get their livelihood by way of getting orders for writing and printing flags, hoardings, banners etc.

Can we be little caring about our environment by reducing our dependence on plastic at least from today?
Lets start a few of these simple beginnings.
1.Ask our servant to take bag from house while going to purchase vegetables.
2. Request our grocer to use paper bags.
3. Encourage local paper wala to make paper bags and same time request your nearby grocer to use them. ( may be little difficult but not impossible)