r2i forum

Amidst all the gloomy things about mother India e.g. growing population & pollution, acute water shortage, depleting groundwater, polluted waterbodies/ lack of drinking water, ever shrinking forests, unplanned/ mushroom concrete jungle etc.

We all know its futile to expect the government to do everything - Lets start a healthy discussion here to as to what can each of us do in Indian circumstances to help in our own way. And specially please highlight if you have already done anything personally to contribute to the nature?

As an example - I will say that I have planted 2 mango and a 1 neem plant & nurtured them for 6 years until my father got transferred to another city and we had to leave that city and subsequently college / professional life made me a nomad. However I am very keen to do something after I return back to India next year. I believe that if each person in India takes accountability to planting & growing at least 1 plant all the way till it becomes a tree - this help solve some of the problems atleast

Similarly there are many other things that many of you would have done e.g. water recycling in apartment complex, park maintenance, road cleaning ownership etc

Your contributions are welcome and will motivate me and others.

**A request - lets dedicate this thread only for mother nature and lets not divert it to other issues re: inflation, corruption, poverty etc**

I use www.ecosia.org to search internet. You can read about them on their site. They plant trees for each search. They explain how they do it (revenue model). Behind the scene, it is a Bing search (by default), but you could do Google search via Ecosia. It is a bunch of young tech geeks somewhere in Berlin behind Ecosia.

thats good boca. I will use them as my default browser now onwards

I try not to waste food. I can't claim that I don't waste any food but I am getting better and hope to get to zero-food-waste someday.

Trafford;630224.....I have planted 2 mango and a 1 neem plant & nurtured them for 6 years until my father got transferred to another city and we had to leave that city and subsequently college / professional life made me a nomad. However I am very keen to do something after I return back to India next year. .....

Would you visit those trees, and report back on the forum as to how they had grown ?

Sure ma'am - I will do anything that pleases my lady


Rgds

okonomi;630232Would you visit those trees, and report back on the forum as to how they had grown ?

I have to admit I have not done much in India. However, we (my son, and my wife) have been running a nice back yard vegetable garden with a lot of variety. I see different kinds of activity in the garden, and hoping that we are having a positive influence on nature. As a family, we work together in the garden. We have enough vegetable to eat, and share during the summer growing months.

We have gained the skills to grow a wide variety of vegetables that we can use when we go to India.

We had insisted on water harvesting when we build the our home. That was 15 years back. Now of course the authority insists on water harvesting.

During our first two years in the house, we had planted 15 trees in our green patches. They are still growing. The authority had planted 5 trees on the periphery and these have really grown. We have to constantly struggle with people that try to stunt their growth. So far we have come ahead.

I also finish all food in my plate and insist on every one around doing the same, some times I do fail.

DW has repeatedly tried to grow vegetables and sometimes with good result but she keeps trying. Oh, yes, one of the trees is a lemon tree and last year it must have given us over 50 fruits (I tried to not say given us lemon.)

recycling/reuse where possible with regards to clothes,household goods etc..
Reduce Cosmetic/Chemical Usage and not to pollute the drain..
reduce wastage of food ( i keep note of what wasted each day and then analyse in the weekend. i started this only recently)
switch off TV/internet etc night times and get reduced electricity usage inturn less CO2 ...
use public transport most of time even in india...
admire nature/wildlife and understading more in detail like climate change etc...

Ofcourse there is loads of scope of improvement from my side..

One easy thing -
When anyone visits India, I suggest to take 'shopping bags' (may be fancy ones) as gifts to their friends/relatives. This way more and more people will be encouraged to ditch the plastics and use shopping bags (just like old times in India).