Ecological footprint for planning industrial townships

City planning is the job of town planner.  While social and environmental aspects are included as add on, these are not fully internalised into the process of planning and decision making.  One of the reason for this externality is that planning and decision making remains dependent on techno-economic feasibility analysis.  Are there any other tools being deployed to assess the socio environmental feasibility or the sustainability or the carrying capacity analysis.

One of the tool being deployed successfully, though at a nascent stage is use of ecological footprint.  

As per the available data on the net, USA has a highest footprint of 8 Ha per capita against its biological carrying capacity of 3.9 Ha, thus creating a deficit of 4.1 Ha.  UK has a footprint of 4.9 Ha against its biological footprint of 1.3 Ha.   India has a footprint of 0.91 against biological footprint of 0.51.

The ecological footprint is being used in Wales, UK for planning development of a new area.  Many cities around the world like San Francisco, Ontario, Quito, Curitiba, London  have started calculating their ecological footprint.

Many new residential and industrial townships are being developed in India.  Inclusion of ecological footprint into techno economic analysis will make these townships ecologically sustainable.

Making your industrial township bicycle friendly

The benefits of using bicycle need no elaboration.  Yet not many cities/ townships are designed to be bicycle friendly.  Due to fast industrialization, particularly countries in transition like India, making the industrial township bicycle friendly could address many issues and give clear advantage.  The sustainable cities collective highlights 10 benefits of promoting bicycles as copied below.  Will you make your industrial township bicycle friendly?


10 benefits

1. Reduce household emission
2. Reduce Traffic
3. Cut down on healthcare cost
4. Take less to make a bike
5. Make you more productive
6. Save entire forests
7. Combat noise pollution
8. Keep land free for nature
9. Help support local business
10. Saves lives

 The link is given below:
http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/big-city/187346/infographic-10-ways-riding-bike-can-save-world 

Vermi composting - creating livelihoods

The disposal of solid waste is a big issue.  More so when all type of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste are mixed.  All such waste land in landfill with consequential cost, forget about a return.  Is there any option for converting waste into value as well as livelihood opportunities?  Yes if one separate the biodegradable waste and convert it into manure.  It is a low cost solution requiring no specific skill.

The industrial township generate lot of organic waste such as waste from tree leaves, grass clippings, cafeteria,  house hold organic waste like vegetables and fruit peels, waste food  etc.  In USA, 30 million tons of food is wasted each year, accounting for twelve percent of all household waste. About 98 percent of that food waste ends up in landfills.

All this could be collected separately and used for composting.  The traditional composting takes more time but worms can make it faster.  In just 2 to 3 months one get rich organic compost manure. Turn to organic living – turn to worm composting.  No additional resources are required.  Worm breed and multiply.  Their population will increase or decrease depending on the availability of fresh waste.

The most common worms used in composting systems are red worms (Eisenia foetida) feed most rapidly at temperatures below 30 C. Temperatures above 30 C may harm them. Therefore, the composting area needs to be under a shed away from direct sun light

The benefits of composing need no elaboration. For soil, it Improves soil aeration, enriches soil with micro-organisms and improves soils water holding capacity.  For crops/ plants, it improves root growth and structure, germination, plant growth, and crop yield. 

In addition there are benefits to local economy.  It creates low skill jobs, needs low capital investment and reduces dependence on costly chemical fertilizers.

There are two approaches.  Do everything yourself within the boundary of industry or township or integrate with the local economy by facilitating a production unit with the involvement of villagers/ local community in the village.  The technical support like training, one time initial cost could be provided by the company.  The compost manure could be sold to the local farmers.  The company could also buy the compost manure for its horticulture requirement. 

  

In India, M.R. Morarka GDC Rural Research Foundation provides support and linkages for vermicomposting and is the only exporter of earthworms from India to Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, etc.  See www.morarkango.com

More information about vermicomposting is available at http://www2.epa.gov/recycle/composting-home

Please share your experience/ Your views/ comments.

Dinesh Agrawal

Save sparrow under your CSR activity

In 80’s, sparrows, the chirpy, cheerful and charming birds were common sight in my house in Delhi.  My morning will start coming out of the house to pick the newspaper and watch the ever chirping, jumping little birds.  Yes, sparrow does not walk, it jumps. Today I do not get opportunity to see one.  Sparrows love to live with human being.   They never make their nest on the trees but prefer in live crevices in the house.  They feed on grains and insects and only feed insects to their chicks.  There population is dwindling fast all over the world, more so in India for unclear reasons.

Can we do something about it? The corporate could provide a new opportunity to save this little bird feeding mainly on the insects under their CSR activities.

1. Provide bird boxes to be kept in the open area or balcony as the modern architecture do not provide opportunity to these little birds to make nest in crevices in the house or apartments.
2. Keep water bowls or bird bath, particularly in the summer season.
3. Feed these birds with grains
4. Celebrate March World Sparrow Day on 20th March every year.

 

For further information log on to:

http://www.sparrowshelter.org.in/index.html

http://www.natureforever.org/index.html

Your views/ comments are invited.

Dinesh Agrawal

Sustainable Consumption and corporate advertising

Everyone knows the power of advertisement.  Company will do anything to increase the consumption of their product and services even if the consumption moves into unsustainable zone or happiness is lost due to changing behaviour pattern.  This was brightly and simply depicted in the documentary "Story of Stuff" by Annie Leonard in 2007. 

The sustainable consumption is defined by the Oslo Symposium on Sustainable Consumption as "the use of services and related products which respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life while minimizing the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle of the service or product so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations."

This implies and the product/ services promotion could focus on the happiness that is not directly linked to over consumption, a paradigm followed by many corporates in promoting their products and services.  

Here is one advertisement by DTAC, Thailand titled "disconnect to connect". This advertisement makes us think beyond the consumption of their product/ services to happiness.

Will corporate promote happiness over the greed of consumption. Do you have any views/ examples. Please share.

Dinesh Agrawal

medical help in remote villages - csr imperative

Medical facilities in remote rural villages

There has been widespread practice of sending the mobile medical van with doctors and medicines in the remote rural villages.  How much impact does it make on the lives of the people?  Does it meet the need of people when they need the medical assistance? 

Sending mobile medical van in a village once a week does not meet the expectation of villagers. People need medical attention when they fall sick and not when the medical van comes.

In contrast the emergency medical care system (popularly known as 108 ambulances) made significant impact and saved many lives.  The concept has been replicated by many states.

The main reason of success was

1. Providing the facility at a time and place of the need when there is an emergency.

2. A complete system with forward and backward linkage was created.  This include making a phone call, tracing the phone location on a map, establishing coordination with police as it may involve accident cases, locating the ambulance with lifesaving facilities at strategic location, tie up with the hospitals with agreement to provide medical help before completing formalities etc.

The medical facilities in remote rural village need innovative ideas:

For villagers preventive Healthcare is more cost effective to poor people than curative.  They need the medical facility beyond the normal working hours in the field.  The medical facility need to ensure availability, affordability and accessibility alongwith reliability and dependability.  Since deployment of doctor in each village is not viable, modified telemedicine system could be a viable solution.

The primary health centre equipped with computer, broadband connection and a laboratory is setup and a trained village health worker or AYUSH doctor is deployed to interact with doctors at remote computer centre through video conference.  The doctors could see the patient condition on the video, get the test report and prescribe the medicines and treatment.  In case of emergency, patient could be referred to regular hospital.

Under the CSR, corporate could provide link to their hospitals and evacuate the patient in ambulance in case of emergencies.  The system will be more economical and provide the real time benefit to villagers as compared to sending mobile medical vans.

A writeup copied from the net on the project initiated by ILFS is given below alongwith the links.

Your views/ comments are invited

Dinesh Agrawal

Ayush Dept to roll out telemedicine hubs for Indian medicines in more rural areas

Joseph Alexander, New Delhi

The Department of AYUSH, in association with the Infrastructure Financial and Leasing Services (IL&FS),has completed a pilot project of telemedicine to deliver the entire gamut of treatment facilities of different Indian streams of medicines under one roof.

Named as ‘Ayush Swasthya Kendra’, the telemedicine hub delivers expert treatment including the tertiary care at the already set-up 20 centres in the far-flung rural areas with the support of the specialists from Kolkata. This 20 centres, 11 in Tripura and 9 in Bihar, have been carrying out diagnosis and treatment under different streams like Ayurveda, Homoeopathy and Unani.

The health division at the IFLS has set up the centres and was providing the technological support under the pilot project, besides carrying out the entire implementation aspects. Each centre has been set up at a cost of around Rs.10 lakh with video conferencing, testing facilities while the medicines were either provided by the Ayush department or the patients were asked to source from outside.

Further details are available at following links:

http://ayurbhishak.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/%E2%99%A3-ayush-dept-to-roll-out-telemedicine-hubs-for-indian-medicines-in-more-rural-areas/

http://www.ilfsets.com/health/ictforhealth/

Solar Water Cooler – cools water naturally without electricity

Solar Water Cooler – cools water naturally

The ‘Natural Water Cooler’ is  a  low cost, environment friendly water cooler that is based on the principle of heat exchange. It cools water naturally according to the external temperature and humidity. It reduces the temperature of input water by 8 to 10 degree centigrade depending upon the external temperature and humidity. It also has an in-built filter that provides clean and hygienic water.

A big advantage of this product is that an external power source is not required for its operation and thus it has almost no operational or maintenance expenses (i.e. no recurring cost). Further detail are available at following website:  http://www.nif.org.in/bd/product-detail/natural-water-cooler

This is an ideal solution for schools and community center in villages where the availability of electricity is uncertain or not available.  Even where electricity is available, it get rid of electricity bills and the maintenance.  Many corporate who provide/ donate regular water cooler to schools and community centre could provide this simple alternate system.

Your views/ comments are invited.

Dinesh Agrawal

Environmental education in schools - sponsor Green Teacher Diploma

Promote Environmental Education in schools in villages under CSR

While there is greater awareness about environmental education in urban schools, there is no dedicated effort to promote environmental education in villages. one of the reason is lack of environmental awareness among the teachers itself.  

CEE has started the Green Teacher Diploma to fill this gap.  The details are available at http://www.greenteacher.org/?page_id=273

The Green Teacher offers teachers an opportunity to empower themselves with the requisite knowledge and skills for effective transaction of concepts in environment and development in the classroom. The Green Teacher is open for teachers and other professionals dealing with education and communication for environment and development in a formal teaching-learning set-up. All teachers and educators, irrespective of their subjects of specialization, will find this diploma meaningful. Till date, over 250 teachers and educators have successfully completed the Green Teacher Programme.    

The corporate could sponsor the teachers from the village schools to get the diploma in this unique distance learning programme and promote environmental education in rural schools.

Your views/ comments are welcome

Dinesh Agrawal

Grain Storage, Food Security and CSR

Can CSR provide a solution for the issue of Food Security and Grain Storage?

The food security for the millions of the poor has been a big issue.  While there have been reports of wastage of grains in transit and storage, the marginal farmer keeps the grain in his house for self-consumption as well as for sowing in the next season. This calls for addressing the issue in a differentiated manner at national and local level.

An overview of Global Food Losses and Waste

·         Almost one-third of food produced for human consumption—approximately 1.3 billion tonnes per year, which could feed the total global population of 7 billion—is either lost or wasted.

·         Overall food loss primarily occurs in the production to retail phase of the food chain.

·         Post-harvest losses occur mainly due to corruption and meagre infrastructure in the developing world.

·         Pre-harvest losses are another major factor in the developing world, as a result of insufficient investment in biosecurity practices.

·         Consumers in industrialised nations waste significantly more food than their counterparts in developing countries.

·         An increasing world population, and its progressively scarce resources, make reduction in food losses and waste a key component in any strategy for a sustainable future global food

The loss/ wastage of grains at National level:

The reports of losses of grains are staggering.  As per the recent report published in Hindustan Times on July 14, 2013,  “As millions of Indians surviving on less than R20 a day starve, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) lost rice and wheat worth R2,050 crore in transit and storage in the last three years”.  One of the main problems is lack of proper storage space.  About 11,07,638.8 metric tonnes (MT) of foodgrains in its godowns have been lost to wastage or pilferage since 2010. The math works out to almost Rs. 700 crore a year in grains that could otherwise feed at least 10 million hungry people for a few weeks.

It is said that about 30% of foodgrains supplied through the public distribution system (PDS) is lost every year. As per report dated Jan 10, 2013, available on the net, India there is glaring lack of infrastructure and food storage facilities, in a new study that says 21 million tonnes of wheat -- equivalent to the entire production of Australia -- goes waste in the country.  The loss of the grain was incurred even though the FCI spent millions of dollars trying to prevent it from being harmed while in storage.  It has admitted that large sums have been spent disposing of the rotten food.  

The problem appears to be heading backwards, going by FCI statistics. FCI had a covered storage facility for 26.59 million tonnes in 2003, and 25.86 million tones in April 2010, even as food grain production nationwide increased to 228 million tonnes in 2009 from 174.19 million tonnes in 2003. The solution ultimately lies in having mechanized silos rather than having just covered storage space.

Can CSR help in reducing these wastage?

In India, about 70% of farm produce is stored by farmers for their own consumption. Farmers store grain in bulk, using different types of storage structures made from locally available materials.

The major construction materials for storage structures in rural areas are mud, bamboo, stones, and plant materials. They are neither rodent-proof, nor secure from fungal and insect attack. Some of the major considerations in building a storage structure to minimise losses are:

·         the structure should be elevated and away from moist places in the house;

·         as far as possible, the structure should be airtight, even at loading and unloading ports;

·         rodent-proof materials should be used for construction of rural storages;

·         the area surrounding the structure should be clean to minimise insect breeding; and

·         the structure should be plastered with an impervious layer to avoid termite attack, or attack by other insects.

Petroleum product metal Drum Bin

Industry uses various types of petroleum product procured in drums.  These drums become scrap after use of product and are often sold as scrap.  Converting these drums  into simple storage drum will address the major issue of loss due to rodents, insects and termite   

This simple, low cost device (about 150 Kg) converts the scrap into a useful product helping farmers save their precious grains and helping nation in food security.

Would you become the first to convert the whole village into one having safe and secure grain storage facility in each house as part of CSR.

Please give your views/ comments.

Dinesh Agrawal

Innovation in design - personal hygiene + water conservation

'Sink-urinal' hybrid saves water and encourages hand washing

While corporates do lot of innovation to satisfy the aspirations of the consumer, the need of the society often remains on the sidelines.  Here is one example where societal needs are kept in mind in innovation. This innovation not only encourages hand washing, but also conserves water in a big way.  The water used for washing hands flushes the urinal.

Kaspars Jursons is a Latvian designer who made a sink-and-urinal-in-one called TANDEM that goes for about $590. The TANDEM is already being used at a concert hall in Riga, Latvia and exported to Norway, Germany, Russia and Poland.  The sink is sensor-activated. The water from the hand wash flushes the urinal.

Has your company designed any socially responsible innovative product.  Do share it.

Dinesh Agrawal

Community Park/ Ecological Garden - integrating human values

Whenever, I read about Lord Krishna, I read about Kadamba tree.  I have never seen a Kadamba tree.  Even if I get an opportunity to see it, I will not be able to identify it like many other trees.  I have been distanced from the nature to the extent, I can now identify few trees among the thousands of species.  

There are thousand of varieties of birds.  How many of them do we see it in our daily life?  how many of them could we recognise?  I always wondered about seeing them in natural environment even if it is only a life like model.  I miss the nature trail in the park with life like model of birds and animals.

I remember sight of the bird Neel kanth was considered very auspicious.  It is related to mythology of  lord Shiva.  It was must to see this bird on Dussehra.  Our cultural and tradition link to nature is vanishing.  What could be done to restore our cultural and traditional values and our knowledge about nature?

Broadly the parks could be categorised into six categories

1. Heritage Parks or botanical garden: Parks with historical or archaeological or horticulture features. This include planting as many species as possible with tagging of botanical name, local name and use in daily life.

2. Conservation Parks: Parks with a strong ecological and nature conservation value. Main activities in these kinds of parks include bird watching, nature walks and environmental camps. This includes the providing nest for birds, models of animals and birds in natural environment etc. This may also include water harvesting schemes and display of soil and water conservation techniques.

3. Cultural and tradition Park: Park with trees which are necessary part of our culture/ tradition and folklore. 

4. Medicinal Park: With medicinal plant 

5. Recreation Parks: Parks with children’s playgrounds, leisure facilities, lakes, boating etc.

6. Health or fitness Park: Park with focus on health activities like Yoga, jogging track with distance marking, exercises/ fitness area etc.

I am not aware of any effort to converge all types of park into one  integrated community garden or central park. It become a knowledge cum conservation cum recreational cus fitness cum culture cum heritage park.  Will your corporate be the first to develop such a park? 

The park are not only a recreational place for family outing and keeping us away from  the video games and idiot box but also an important aspect of our culture, tradition and environment.

Do you know any organisation which has adopted this concept.  Or be the first among the corporate. 

Please share your views/ comments.

Dinesh Agrawal