http://www.openspaceindia.org/ has organised this competition where people convert to an eco friendly lifestyle in all the practical and temporarily efficient ways they can, and blog about it. And there's one award for the most committed eco friendly effort, and one for the best blog. Now it is a matter of concern to me that I came across the poster a little late, but my eco friendly efforts had begun months before this contest came up. Never mind...
Now, I need to document all my efforts with pictures, vidoes, and blog posts. At the moment, I have no pictures or videos, but here's what I've been doing:
- Composting biodegradable garbage in the house. We've always kept the biodegradable waste separate, but now, we're putting it in a pot with some soil, adding some water, and waiting for it to decompose so that we can use it for our little pot garden. And this is till we get our compact biomass digestor, which will make us independent of LPG. For more, please visit http://www.arti-india.org/
- Using Compact Flourescent Lights. CFLs are huge energy savers, and when you use less energy, you reduce the demand for it. That is the need of the hour-reduce demand for the environmentally hazardous generation of energy.
- Researching eco friendly houses. Everything from eco friendly energy to walls, roofs, rainwater harvesting, and a whole lot of things; it is every bit possible to become completely self sufficient in energy, food, and water. This obviously reduces the damage caused by large scale energy generation, food transport, and so on. And once I build my own eco friendly house successfully (yes, I am dead serious about this), I will work on developing entire eco friendly human settlements, including eco friendly industries.
- Using public transport. That cuts down on not just the fuel consumption, but also the travel cost. I am also successfully encouraging my parents and friends to use public transport. It is pretty convenient, and leaves you hardly any excuse for non-punctuality.
- Reusing one sided printed paper. I have entire notebooks binding paper printed or written on on one side. And I do use these for study purposes. This effort of mine has also been noticed by my friends, and they like it. You may not believe it, but using the blank sides of pamphlets, office printouts, and old school notebooks have served me for an entire academic year!
- Refusing and reusing plastic. We have made it a point to carry cloth/paper/plastic bags with us, wherever we go, be it in the car, or the supermarket, or anywhere else. And we refuse to take any plastic bags to carry articles. In case we don't have a bag with us, we carry them in our hands. I also discourage my friends from accepting plastic bags, and offer to carry their stuff myself. Producing plastic is like wearing a noose around your neck- it's non biodegradable, and will choke all life on the planet to death!!
- Blogging about the Global Environment Crisis. I have another blog http://tacklingtheterribletruth.blogspot.com which you can check out for more.
These are my own independent efforts so far. More efforts related to the competition begin tomorrow. The next post will include descriptions of these efforts, and pictures and videos of efforts mentioned today. I am participating in this event, not with winning on my mind, but to get new ideas, and execute them, with motivation. That's all for now!
