Rectangular plots of dark soil at the school’s entrance hold the promise of spinach, chillies, brinjal and radish. Then there are little patches of herb gardens growing lemongrass, mint, brahmi, rosemary, etc.
The campus already has abundant trees planted over the years that yield lemon, chickoo, moringa, and curry leaves.
The school decided to set up a community garden, Greendom, as part of The School Enterprise Challenge — an international awards programme for schools, that encourages them to set up businesses.
A beginning was made during Van Mahotsav in July where every child donated one plant or sapling.
A sale of these helped raise seed money for the project; a part was donated to charity. They have had two sales so far, which have helped raise Rs. 32,000. A part of it is ploughed back into the garden.
Principal Manjula Raman hopes to convert the school into a green zone and create awareness among children on the effort that goes into growing food.The school gardener and teachers are the go-to people to learn about plant
care.Dry leaves and food waste are made into compost on campus. Many children take the plants home to care for them. And at school, the students weed, water and tend to them.
BHUMIKA K
Mridula Ramesh
Madurai
Reduces waste generation at home
In July 2015, Mridula Ramesh’s family of four and the staff in her sprawling bungalow in Chokkikulam, Madurai, decided to record for a week how much waste they threw into the municipal bin. It averaged 17.6 kg a day. Mridula,
the JMD of Southern Roadways, set herself a target of going zero-waste ensuring her family became Madurai’s first to not send its trash out.
“I do not cook, and yet I turned out to be the biggest culprit,” she says, speaking of an unmindful and irregular grocery purchase pattern. “In the last 15 months, I have stuck to a shopping list, fully aware of the stock
at home and exactly what is required for the kitchen.”
“When we clutter, we tend to forget, and that soon becomes waste,” says Mridula.
“Now, our grocery bills have plummeted by 40 per cent and there is drastic reduction in outgoing waste.”
The next step was to give the girls in the kitchen open bins to separate biodegradable and non-biodegradable trash. She has now created a major composting system in her backyard and the garden is flourishing.
Her only worry is the less than half-a-kilo plastic, cardboard cartons, medicine covers and other FMCG packaging.
The conservation plan has been duplicated at her company too, where 500-plus employees generated 200 kg of waste.
Within five months, the canteen waste reduced to less than 10 kilos from 40, and the garden waste of 110 kg goes for bulk composting.
Mridula has combined her eco-friendly action with teaching, and she is a clean tech investor.
“It is not just enough to raise awareness,” she says, “a start-up is fantastic to create impact”.
As founder of Sundaram Climate Institute in Madurai, Mridula offers waste reduction tips to students, residents and writes about it too. Videos of her approach to zero-waste at home demonstrate easy steps to turning garbage
into black gold.
-SOMA BASU
Thanal
Thiruvananthapuram
Revive indigenous paddy varieties
Intense effort has gone into the ‘Save Our Rice’ (SOR) campaign pioneered by voluntary research group, Thanal. It has resulted in the collection of more than 1,000 indigenous paddy varieties, some brought back from the
verge of extinction for the seed bank. The NGO has cultivated 219 of them, of which 164 are variants indigenous to Kerala. “Records say Kerala had almost 3,000 varieties of paddy. We are fortunate to have been able
to collect 164 and consumers can buy 25 of them. We sell some of them in our store in the city,” says Sridhar Radhakrishnan, director.
Thanal’s campaign has been successful in seven states (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh). The SOR campaign was founded in 2004 along with two other promoters of organic
food, CREATE in Tamil Nadu and Sahaj Samrudha in Karnataka, to revive the cultivation of indigenous varieties of paddy across the country. It was a time when indigenous seeds had gone to seed and traditional paddy cultivators
were reeling under the pressure created by industrial cultivation of the so-called ‘high-yielding variety’(HYV) of rice. The soil quality deteriorated due to excess use of fertilizers. “It was clear that the farmers
were losing their sovereignty over paddy cultivation. We had to do something,” says Sridhar.
Today Thanal and all those who are associated with the SOR movement are reaping rewards. Paddy festivals are conducted every year and the participation has contributed greatly in building an understanding among farmers
and consumers about the value of traditional varieties. Hundreds of farmers, especially from North Kerala, have become part of the movement. The Rice Diversity Block run by Thanal at Panavelly, Wayanad cultivates all
the 219 varieties.
-ASWIN V.N
Mridula, the JMD of Southern Roadways, set herself a target of going zero-waste ensuring her family became Madurai’s first to not send its trash out.
Thanal and all those who are associated with the Save Our Rice movement are reaping rewards. Paddy festivals are conducted every year...
