Friend or Foe?…… 17 December 2007

This entity is both, depending on where it is found. It is Ozone.

Ozone is essential for human life. The ozone layer present at an altitude of 20 to 30 kilometers above the earth in the stratosphere is responsible for absorbing the harmful ultraviolet radiation emitted by the Sun.

On the other hand, high levels of ozone at the ground level are the cause of eye irritation and respiratory problems.

Human beings are largely responsible in both the cases:

· During various activities indulged by the humans, substantial quantities of compounds containing chlorine and bromine are released leading to the damage of the ozone layer.

· Increasing number of motorised vehicles release nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide. Sunlight converts these into ozone.

The good news: Great progress has been made by humans in reducing the use of such items, which release chlorine and bromine.

The next time you are about to take your car out, hold your breath, think about yourself, your children and grandchildren, and ask a question to yourself: Can I cover the distance on foot or take a bus?

S .Gopal
….Keying in is better than idling

Ira: What is it?……. 9 December 2007

No, it is not an endangered species. It is rare, but not an animal though. Read on.

· Ira is a village in the Bantwal taluk of the Dakshin Kannada district of the state of Karnataka, India.

· It houses 1 231 families.

· It is completely clean, fully literate, and plastic-free.

· All the houses will soon have toilets set up with the help of the government and donation from a private contractor.

· All the plastic garbage generated in the village are being collected and sent to Bangalore for recycling.

· Ira boasts of

o 4 schools

o 3 temples

o 2 child care centres

o 1 each anganwadi, primary health centre, post office, registration centre, telephone exchange etc.

· The elders of Ira are also planning to make it a dispute less village.

· Delegations from various states of India and even other countries are visiting Ira to study and replicate the system in their villages.

Will we urbanites learn a lesson or two from Ira? Your guess is as good as mine.

S. Gopal

…..keying in is better than idling

Eco-friendly technology….the Indian connection 17 November 2007

Veena Sahajwalla was born in Mumbai and educated in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. She is an award-winning material scientist working now at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

She has developed a `green’ steel technology that substitutes about 30 percent of coke and coal (required in producing steel using Electric Arc Furnace) with polyethylene waste plastic.

Plastic is simply another form of carbon. In making steel there is essentially no difference between the polyethylene plastic in shopping bags and a natural resource like coal.

Advantages:

• Millions of tonnes of waste plastic will be recycled into steel.
• Less space will be required for plastic landfill.
• Reduction in demand for coke and coal .
• Less power-on time and total power use.
• Drop in green house gas emissions

Commercial production using this technology is underway at the Sydney furnaces of OneSteel. There are 300 EAF steel makers in the world accounting for 40 percent of the world’s steel production. If all these use this new technology, the benefits will be immense.

S .Gopal
….Keying in is better than idling

Ecological Footprint… 16 November 2007

The term Ecological Footprint was developed by a Canadian ecologist named William Rees in the year 1992 to describe the impact that an individual has on his or her environment. An ecological footprint takes into account such things as car ownership, amount of garbage generated, how often the individual walks or rides a bicycle, and other things designed to gauge his or her land and water usage.

While the ecological footprint does have some inaccuracies, it is a starting point for a discussion about how humans use the environment.

It is estimated that there are 4.5 useful acres on Earth for each person. Most people in the West have an ecological footprint that is far larger; they would need multiple planets to sustain a population consuming at that rate. People in impoverished nations have a much smaller ecological footprint.

If Western nations work together, they could greatly reduce the amount of resources they are consuming. Individual citizens could also make a difference. Some changes require drastic life style alterations, while others are simple.

S .Gopal
….Keying in is better than idling

Deepavali-the Sensible and the Senseless 9 November 2007

Yesterday I visited a relative. While he was itching to burst crackers, his two school-going boys refused to do so saying that it would lead to environmental pollution and also support child-labour in the factories manufacturing fire-works !

On the contrary, another family (who are into jewellery business) boasted to me that they have purchased crackers worth Rupees one and a half lakhs.

The municipal authorities in Bangalore are losing their night’s sleep wondering how they will clear 14 000 tonnes of cracker-garbage that they will confront them tomorrow morning. They are also worried that it may get into the newly-cleared drains and clog them. In the meanwhile the garbage-clearing contractors have planned a stir in protest against the authorities not allocating enough dumping yard.

While the chest and allergy specialists have warned of increased incidences of breathing problems due to cracker smoke, a biology lecturer has a different take on the subject. She says: `Sulphur and nitreous smoke from fireworks will kill *microbial pathogens* and free the community from virus-related illnesses`.

S .Gopal
….Keying in is better than idling

Garbage In….Garbage Out 31 October 2007

I learnt this term two decades ago to mean `if you feed incorrect data into the computer, you will get an absurd output’.

Toady, however, I am talking of real garbage.

• Bangalore generates 2 500 tonnes of garbage every day. This is being taken to the outskirts of Bangalore. Why should the people living there agree for that to be dumped there? So the garbage moves in and out and gets thrown wherever nobody is looking at !
• A lot of electronic waste gets imported into India from western countries in the guise of `computers for charity to be distributed among the poor’.
• India officially sends its electronic waste to Belgium and China for extraction of valuable metals.
• The Kerala government last week refused permission to a ship from New York to unload 60 tonnes of garbage which was imported by a paper mill as `waste paper for recycling’.

This is the short story of `Garbage In and Garbage Out’ !

This is known as NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) syndrome.

S. .Gopal …keying in is better than idling

Gold matters… 25 October 2007

Value for money

Is the gold you are buying as pure as being promised by the trader? It is estimated that impurity in gold sold in India ranges from 11 to 39 percent. Indians consume 800 tonnes of gold annually and lose about Rupees 7 500 Crores due to impure gold. Hallmarking is the process of certifying the purity of gold. Hence buy only hallmarked gold.

Will you like to cause injury to others?

In the traditional method of making jewellery, silver or copper is used to solder gold. Many jewellers have now switched over to cadmium due to its good fluidity during the soldering process. Jewellery made using this process is known as KDM jewellery.

The unsafe side of KDM jewellery is that the toxic fumes given out during the soldering process (using cadmium – classified as heavy metal by scientists) are injurious to the health of the jewellery workers. There are about 80 000 jewellery workers in Karnataka and many of them children.

Will you still say `yes’ to non-hallmaked or KDM jewellery?

S. .Gopal
…keying in is better than idling

Assault on Mount Everest…….… 15 October 2007

On 29 May 1953 Man (in fact, two men, named Hillary and Norgay) tamed Mount Everest by climbing on to the top of the un-climbable. After that about 3 700 ascents have taken place. If you thought that this in itself was an assault on the tallest peak in the world and nature, please read on.

China has decided to

• install a mobile base station there
• send an Olympic relay torch team there

The GSM mobile station to be installed by Huawei Technologies will provide mobile network coverage to the relay torch team. It boasts of several innovations.

· built on 3 G and IP technologies

· solar power supply

· satellite communication system

· Ethernet fibre transmission

It is said that the equipment will comply with the European ROHS (The Restriction of the use of certain Hazardous substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment) environment protection standard.

I don’t know what environmental experts have to say on this. On my part, I wonder whether Mount Everest deserves this hostile treatment.

S. .Gopal …keying in is better than idling

Brazil..Agricultural Powerhouse .Its impact?… 14 October 2007

Brazil has become an agricultural powerhouse and is poised to overtake the United States as the world’s leading exporter of food stuff. It is the top exporter of soyabean and beet,and is also become a fast growing exporter of cotton.

Embrapa is the agency in Brazil that does research on tropical agricultural, lifestock, biotechnology, and bioenergy. It has transformed the vast Savannah sandy grass lands, spanning thousands of kilometers, into a nutricious agricultural belt. It has used the technique of making soil fertile by dousing them with phosphorous and lime. It is also promoting biofuels in a big way.

The flip side

• Transformation of Savannah grasslands is threatening the environment and the native species.
• Tying up with the German chemical giant BASF to develop genetically modified soyabean is being questioned by some scientists as its long term effects are yet unknown.
• Efforts to grow biofuels in place of food crops have also rightly come in for fierce criticism.

S.Gopal …. keying in is better than idling

ActNow… 8 October 2007

Started by a very small group of youngsters who have recently finished their degrees in journalism, ActNow is based near Kalyan Nagar in Bangalore. Pleasant, but angry (rightly so) about the goings-on in the Society, they are dedicated and passionate about environment.

ActNow organised the `Aranyam Wildlife and Environment Festival’ in Guru Nanak Bhavan in Bangalore. It ran for three days and ended yesterday evening. It was extremely well managed considering the meager resources they had at their disposal. A great effort, indeed. They, however, deserved a much better audience. I attended on all the three days – about four hours each day. I have returned highly inspired. Problems due to global warming are just around the corner. Correctly, we must ActNow !!!

Aranyam 2007 was supported by Epson, Karnataka State Pollution Control Board, Radio Mirchi, Indian Institute of Science, and a few more.

Their website www.actnow.co.in is currently under reconstruction. Other related resources are: www.carbonneutralbangalore.org/ and www.saisantuary.com.

Gopal …..keying in is better than idling