The Changemakers
Five social and ecological entrepreneurs, both individuals and
organisations, talk about how they are saving the planet in their own
little way.
What does a techie who now sets up rainwater-harvesting systems in rural
schools have in common with an urban farmer who advocates growing
vegetables on terraces and balconies? Can an apartment owner who
composts her kitchen waste identify with a villager who stitches
washable sanitary pads, or a traditional honey hunter in the Nilgiris?
In a sense, they are all alike; they are changemakers. All of them are
social and ecological entrepreneurs. This is how they are making a
difference.
Keeping the last forests alive
Halan from Baviyoor village is a honey collector. He has no body suit or
protective gear. Instead, he relies on traditional knowledge gained
over generations. Halan is a Kurumba, one of the many indegenous
communities living in the Nilgiris, part of the Nilgiri Biosphere
Reserve (NBR) of the Western Ghats. Without his knowing it, he is doing
his bit to conserve the NBR.
Today, the honey he collects is packaged and marketed to urban consumers
under the evocatively named ‘Last Forests’ brand. This initative,
promoted by the Kotagiri-based Keystone Foundation, aims to provideg a
livelihood for tribals like Halan, while protecting and conserving the
forests of the NBR.
Suganthi Thangavelu, a marketing specialist with Last Forest, says, “KF
involves tribal communities in areas such as natural resource management
(promoting apiculture) and enterprise management (production of food
and artisanal products). We work with over 1,000 individuals (honey
collectors, craftsmen, farmers).” The biggest benefit to them, she
explains, is that they get upfront cash payment and the assurance that
the quantities they produce will be purchased .
The Last Forest brand offers nine categories of organic/fair-trade and
natural products. This ranges from varieties of honey (raw, bitter,
wild, ginger) to spices, coffee and oils, personal care products (lip
balms, soaps) and even home accessories (Kurumba craft work) and
readywear. These are available at exclusive Last Forest-owned Green
Shops located at Udhagamandalam, Kotagiri, Coonoor and Mysore and other
stores in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Puducherry.
Beyond the exotic allure of the brand lies a grim truth. The NBR
forests, spread over Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, are under threat.
On the one hand are human activities such as tourism, poaching, logging
and extraction of medicinal plants; on the other, there is climate
change. Now, the bees are getting affected too. A May 2011 report in The
Hindu noted that bees in the Western Ghats are abandoning their
colonies, leading to a sharp decline in honey production. So, the Last
Forests brand is not just about “buying organic”. It is about investing
in the forests and indigenous communities. For what will happen to Halan
if the bees fly away?
More details at www.lastforest.in or www.keystone-foundation.org
From the skies to schools
Avinash Krishnamurthy, executive director of Biome Environmental, a
Bangalore-based NGO, is a former techie now into rainwater harvesting
(RWH). Over the past year, Biome has installed, and in some cases
revived (existing), RWH systems in eight government schools around
Bangalore. Located in water-stressed regions, these schools depend on
panchayat water. Supply is either erratic or non-existent. There is no
safe water for cooking (the mid-day meal), washing vessels or even for
use in the toilets.
From 2005, the Government of Karnataka has spent over Rs.77 crore on a
Suvarna Jala scheme to install rooftop RWH systems in more than 23,000
schools in the state. Krishnamurthy says the scheme is not working. “In
some cases, the schools don’t even need RWH systems,” he says.
So far, Biome has spent Rs 7 lakh on the project. Local support and
knowledge is crucial to their success. Ramakrishnappa from Kuruburakunte
near Devanahalli helps the NGO identify schools with the worst water
shortage.
Given that there is also increasing contamination to contend with, Biome
wants to provide testing kits so students can test for fluorides and
nitrates in the water.
“The children can then monitor water quality in their villages,” adds
Krishnamurthy. For instance, at the Government Urdu School in
Vijayapura, some 40 km from Bangalore, Biome spent Rs 11,000 to revive
the school’s defunct RWH system. The NGO also showed teachers and the
school’s 60-odd students how to maintain the RWH system.
Things are already changing. In August, there were good rains. Nageena, a
class seven student, is happy. “We can use the toilets now,” she
laughs.
More details at www.biome-solutions.com
Treat your trash to terracotta
Trupti Godbole and Sarita Kotagiri are activists, not the
slogan-shouting type but the get-it-done kind. In their quiet way, these
two women have, for the past four years, converted their apartment
building (Sarovar Apartments, LB Shastri Nagar, Bangalore) into a re-use
and recycle zone where nothing is trashed. They’ve convinced other
apartment owners in the area to follow suit. And they have uploaded
YouTube videos about their experience. They are committed composters.
They use Daily Dump.
Daily Dump is the brainchild of Bangalorean and industrial designer
Poonam Bir Kasturi. Her premise is stunningly simple: convert your
kitchen waste into compost at home using a composter. Daily Dump offers
‘terracotta composters (basically, tiered pots) and various other
products for both the home and the larger community. Launched in 2006,
Daily Dump operates on an ‘open source’ platform — others can “clone”
the concept. “There are 15 other clones” operating presently in the
country. There’s also a franchisee in Chile.
“When we began, waste management was not as big an issue as it is now,”
points out Poonam. As of August 2012, Daily Dump users were responsible
for keeping over 7,000 kgs of organic waste out of landfills. At Sarovar
Apartments, four big composters handle 10 kg of organic/kitchen waste
daily. Impressive as this sounds, this is still a drop in the ocean.
Research shows that Bangalore generates upto 4,500 tonnes of waste per
day. “Sixty per cent of that is organic,” Poonam says.
To show people what happens to their trash, Daily Dump conducts a
day-long tour called Trash Trail. The trip includes interactions with
small-scale entrepreneurs, recyclers, sorters and dealers. Trash Trails
are organised based on citizen interest. By the end of October, this
year, Poonam will launch Recycle Guru , a website to bring citizens
closer to their local recycler. “Log on to Recycle Guru, get the number
of your local raddiwala/kabadiwalla, and call him to pick up your
waste,” says Poonam. Initially, the website will be Bangalore-specific.
More details at www.dailydump.org
Eat. Grow. Live.
In the mid 1990s, Dr. B.N. Vishwanath, a gardening enthusiast went
public with his passion. Grow greens on your terraces and your
balconies, he urged his fellow Bangaloreans. Not many listened.
Bangalore, then, was a sleepy city of sprawling bungalows and
well-tended gardens. As the city grew, the bungalows disappeared and
space began to be measured in square feet. What Dr. Vishwanath said all
those years ago finally made sense.
Today, the agriculturist is considered one of the pioneers of urban
farming in India. Founding trustee of the Garden City Farmers Trust
(GCFT), his message is the same: “Eat what you can grow in your garden”
or Oota from your Thota (OfyT).
“At organic gardening workshops, we tell participants to set up RWH
systems and convert their kitchen waste into compost. That reduces their
carbon footprint. And we tell them to buy seeds only for the very first
time and thereafter, to grow their own,” Dr. Vishwanath says. Now,
seeds of interest in OfyT are being sown in neighbouring cities such as
Chennai, Hyderabad and Thiruvanathapuram.
Bangalore being an IT city, OfyT is growing thanks to innumerable blogs,
web sites and the GCFT Facebook page. Two former techies in particular,
Meera K. and Vincent Subramaniam, have played a prominent role in
spreading the word as founder-co-editors of Citizen Matters, a
Bangalore-specific community news platform. They are gardening
enthusiasts too. Meera has a small terrace garden. Vincent has fruit
trees and a kitchen garden.
OfyT came into being as a workshop/exhibition in August 2011, as part of
the Kitchen Gardens International Day celebrations. Five editions have
been held since. The next OfyT event will be in held Bangalore in
November 2012.
More details at www.gardencityfarmers.org or www.facebook.com/groups/OrganicTerraceGardening
Back to basics
Ever wondered what impact menstrual hygiene has on the environment, with
all those disposable sanitary pads used and thrown away every month?
Can women adapt to healthy, affordable menstrual practices that are also
eco-positive?
Eleven women in Auroville, Puducherry, are trying to prove just that.
They make up Eco Femme, a women’s empowerment and self-help group, that
stitches and sells washable cloth-based sanitary pads. The group’s
output is 1,600 pads a month — mostly sent to the U.K., the U.S. and the
Netherlands. Now Eco Femme is trying to expand within India.
Founder Kathy Walkling is a long-time Auroville resident who began by
designing, using and selling washable pads at Auroville. Eco Femme was
born in 2009, when she involved women self-help group members of the
Auroville Village Action Group (AVAG), an NGO, which runs various social
enterprises in the villages around Auroville.
There are many taboos and gender-based stereotypes associated with
menstruation — being considered ‘impure’, becoming a social outcast on
those days, and so on. Eco Femme tries to address these issues through
educational workshops, mostly with rural women. Plus, the project aims
to get both rural and urban women to go back to cloth. Right now, there
are three models of 100 per cent cotton pads designed for rural women.
“Currently, the rural pads are being product tested with over 1,000
rural women and girls across Tamil Nadu,” explains Walkling. For middle-
and upper-class Indian women, Eco Femme has an ‘export’ or
international range of all-in-one pads with wings and leakproof layer,
adapted from brands available in the West.
“A U.K. survey showed that a woman throws away approx 125-150 kgs of
sanitary waste during her menstruating life, which is assumed to be 35
years,” Walkling says. In the Indian context, there are no surveys. “But
a survey in the Indian Textile Journal on the market potential of
disposable sanitary napkins says there are over 300 million women of
menstruating age in India. The article says that if all of them used
sanitary napkins, it would result in sales of (and consequently waste
from) 58,500 million pieces a year.” Eco Femme pads, adds Walkling, help
women save money (a washable pad can last years) and the environment. A
single cloth pad represents the equivalent of 120 disposable
tampons/pads over a five-year period.
More details at www.villageaction.in or www.ecofemme.org
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