Category: What to do?

A talk about Laws

joothikaLeave a comment

Tanya had a question; what about policies? Who makes them? Who enforces them? Who impacts them? Eileen, a Law student, had some answers for us.

The constitution governs environmental laws; mostly enforced by the central government. Smaller, state governments or municipalities can do a better job at enforcement and implementation.

But who monitors what companies produce? ” As long as a company is registered, they can make anything”

So, if you want to know more about anything in India, you can go to the ‘Right to Information Act’. It is taken pretty seriously in India. Plus, it is anonymous.

But there isn’t a government body that monitors all products. There is a Bureau of Indian Standards though, the one that has an ISI mark. But beware, if ii is not accompanied by a 7 digit code, the claim might be fake.

Image result for isi mark

We asked her if she can help us contact someone who knows more about Indian standards. That is one lead.

But what about government policies? I remembered Shubhra Verma, an Environment management professional working in the e-waste sector. She told us a few things

-E-waste is an unorganized sector. Most of it is illegal work. Many groups are trying to get into legalizing and organizing.

-70% of waste in India is CRT, Cathode Ray Tubes. It follows a 3 step process

-MEiT, Karo Sambhav, Reverse Logistics Group are a few organizations looking into this.

-Different countries have different laws, some are strict, some are lax

Golden Rules for Sustainable Living

3LostSoulsLeave a comment

So, we decided, lets break it all down. Make it simple. If a person had to live sustainable and make the shift,what are the things he could do? What are simple easy interventions on the user side we could think of? So we came up with the Golden Rules for Sustainable Living and we wrote down everything, from something as simple as planting trees, owning a pet to something as vague as Increasing Quality of life. The next step would be to branch it out, What are the next level actionable step in each point? (Written in dark blue) and that led to a series of interventions that would help make each point executable.

The idea was to come up with Mushroom Projects that are

  1. Local
  2. Context based Multipliable
  3. Robust
  4. Adaptable and flexible
  5. And not necessarily Scalable.

One major Insight we got from the people we talked to was that

1.Going back to the roots, Going Local was one major point in the success of the idea.

2. The idea was to have small projects at different levels which would be part of one big project in the bigger picture.

3.To Advertise the idea of sustainability through Products and not just through words.

4. It was easier to maintain and implement an idea in a small and local level. Also going Local increased interaction among people,leading to better human connect and quality of life.

You will find the online map on “How to live better below

https://coggle.it/diagram/XK7VIumriKHWuUUG/t/-/69e582939769dc1430a5565a7be276db6717eefc8f2a304d9f6cff4a1b1447fb

Net Positive

shibnLeave a comment

Let’s start with a question, just a basic one “How many of you are feeling positive today ?” I hope most of you are and it feels good right; being hopeful or giving a cause for happiness to someone or something. It’s giving out from what we have. That’s exactly what Net Positive is all about; giving back more than we take. Net Positive is a new way of doing business by putting back more into society, the environment and the global economy than it takes out. It is basically doing more good than the common notion of doing less bad to the environment. So this act of balance, you’re taking something from one side and giving more on the other side, will help keep the resources replenish and restore.

The Net Positive Project launched on 7 June 2016, aims at making it a standard way for companies to quantify, assess and enhance their positive impacts. The project will also have responsibility for developing resources like guidance and tools, aligning it with parallel movements like circular economy and increase awareness. Kingfisher making forest in exchange of the timber they use as the raw material, IKEA’s PEOPLE AND PLANET strategy, Dell’s online access to degrees, SKF’s BeyondZero strategy are all some of the examples to look into.

Apart from the business point, if we look at it from the very layman side also we can contribute to this Net Positive effect and I suppose its not that difficult. Just imagine growing your own food in your backyard and giving it the kitchen and veg remnants, that we actually waste, as its food; If you eat meat, support the farmers that raise animals on pastures or in it’s habitat. So the core is nothing other than a regenerative approach to bring back the balance. It’s a give and take.

It’s all interconnected, just like natural ecosystems. That’s because we are part of the ecosystem surrounding us. The problem comes when we put us, the self declared intelligent creatures living on the planet, at the center. Instead, we are merely a part of the whole system and its all woven to each other. One part moves, everything moves; even if incremental. We affect change everywhere we go. So, let’s make that change be positive and regenerative.

Again, it’s good to be positive 🙂