My City My Responsibility - Harvesting rainwater for the Dry days!

 Dear All, 

Collage of some of the photos

Being a part of the Climate Reality Project, I happened to connect with Shivam Singh, a young enthusiast working on tree plantation and the founder of a startup ExploreiT, working for youth empowerment and environmental activism. 

Currently he is also assisting Col. Shashikant Dalvi, a retired army officer, working tirelessly for incorporating rainwater harvesting in housing societies of Pune and the founder of Parjanya Rainwater Harvesting Consultancy. He is currently focused on making the rural areas around Pune water resilient, through his association with the Climate Reality Project. One such initiative lead to installation of rainwater harvesting systems in four villages namely Kurvandi, Thugaon, Bavadi, Karegaon on Pune Nashik road. 

I got an opportunity to visit these villages, and was accompanied by Dr Prassana Jogdeo, Co-founder of Lemnion Green Solutions, Radhika Dhingra, Director of  Badlaav Social Reform Foundation. and her colleague Munira. Mr. Anirudh Todkar, CEO, MAPS Industries Pune, a dynamic personality responsible for implementation of the RWH System also accompanied us. 

The first village we visited was Karegaon, where we met the Sarpanch Mrs. Suvarna Gevade. She was very happy to greet us. Radhika spoke to her about Sustainable Menstruation practices and she seemed very approachable. Since a lot of young women in the villages use sanitary napkins. The disposal of used sanitary napkins is creating a menace in cities, in spite of the waste management systems being in place. In villages, this is creating a bigger disaster, with a potential to contaminate water sources. Hence, Radhika briefed the Sarpanch on cloth pads as well as menstrual cup and its usage. 

Potatoes left to dry

Another thing observed was though the villagers have good access to LPG supply, every house had a traditional Chulha working on fuelwood. Here I briefly spoke about Samuchit's smokeless cookstoves. The Sarpanch was quite keen on this. The village women seemed open to change their day to day practices for betterment of their quality of life. 

I was fascinated to know that the villages were self sustaining from livelihood perspective due to the interventions by PepsiCo under the Contract Farming Agreement for growing potatoes. All the villagers were involved in this market driven agricultural practice. Though this looks like a win win situation, growing the same crop every year, in order to cater to the urban luxury market needs (and thereby neglecting local food security) may have several adverse consequences. It may cause soil quality degradation and environmental impacts due to lack of diversification in crops in the long run. Also in the face of climate change, the lack of local food security may increase vulnerability of the communities. As the monsoon pattern is totally being affected by climate change, agriculture across India is greatly affected. This may lead to larger fluctuations in food prices going ahead. Growing sufficient food for own consumption is therefore a better strategy for a farming community. 

Discussion on Sustainable Menstruation

However, the villagers seemed to be very happy for their improved standard of living, and seemed less bothered about the cost of INR 3,000,000/- every month from January to June/July to tanker in water for domestic use. Currently the local government is bearing the cost, but this is an unsustainable practice. Here the setup of Rooftop rainwater harvesting systems installed through the inputs of Col. Dalvi and Mr. Todkar play a crucial role. The rooftop rainwater harvesting systems were set such that they recharged the existing borewells, which would help recharge the aquifer and raise the groundwater level. It is expected that this will at least partially if not fully fulfill the water requirements of the villagers during the next summer season. 

I felt that corporates like PepsiCo come to such villages with attractive proposals without giving any consideration to the prevailing ecological and social conditions in the village. Such villages turn to be neither a village nor a city, but get stuck somewhere in between. 

Traditional fuelwood cookstoves

Col. Dalvi believes that rain water harvesting is just a beginning. We can slowly support these villages into becoming self sustaining, socially, ecologically and economically.  Since the villagers are open to new ideas and are ready to make the shift, I felt its worthwhile to undertake a few sessions on specific topics with the villagers. Another woman Sarpanch Mrs Manisha Totre also met her along with local ASHA workers and members of women's SHGs. They are also keen to host us for a session on Sustainable menstruation and smokeless cooking stoves soon.  

Discussion on smokeless cookstoves

Overall it was great visit, the weather was in our favour - it was pleasant and did not rain. Five of us had interesting discussions on overall environmental issues related to w

aste management and political outlook. 

I am thankful to Shivam for organizing this visit and Col. Dalvi for his enthusiasm in explaining to us the overall system and my fellow colleagues for interesting discussions. 

Pournima Agarkar.

www.samuchit.com

My City My Responsibility - Biogas technology for all by VAAYU

Dear All,

Picture collage

Under the Citizens Charter and Action Agenda for Sustainable Pune initiative as mentioned in my earlier blog we are showcasing local sustainable technologies that can be adopted by anyone who yearns for a Sustainable lifestyle. 

In the last week on 28th Feb, we successfully conducted a workshop in collaboration with Vaayu Mitra who deals with household Biogas technology by conversion of kitchen waste to fuel. Priyadarshan Sahasrabuddhe the promoter of this technology is an enthusiastic engineer who has been driving this initiative to go LPG free by using household organic waste. There are almost 130 installations till date that are converting about 1 ton of food waste per day. Right from school going children to aged senior citizens can easily operate this technology. It has been installed in more than 10 cities now. 

We got an overwhelming response to the workshop held in Indradhanushya centre for Citizenship and Environment Education and that too on a weekday evening. It just shows that Pune is slowly moving towards a Sustainable City which is the aim of our project on Citizens Charter for Sustainable Pune.

I would like to narrate some key aspects of the workshop that fascinated me.

I briefly tried to explain the relevance of this workshop to our study that we have been doing on making the city Sustainably SMART through Citizens active participation and engagement. We are playing a role of a connector between the citizens and Sustainable solution providers. Our idea is to reach out to more and more people with sustainable solutions in order to enable them towards sustainability and in turn making the city Sustainable.

Then, Priyadarshan Sahasraddhe, introduced the technology and its working with the help of a diagram and narrated his journey which was quite a struggle to apply engineering fundas on ground. He mentioned that meeting Dr Anand Karve and working under his guidance for developing the biogas technology helped him learn key lessons. Apart from this he believes in 'Small is beautiful' and linking it to Individual Social Responsibility (ISR) has been his idea of a Green Investor.

We were fortunate to have Dr Anand Karve in the workshop, being a botanist and an innovator having a scientific aptitude, he explained the basics behind the functioning of Biogas very well. Though he is not a microbiologist, I have never heard anyone talk about microbes and bacteria so well as he does. He is a pro bacteria man I can say. How do bacteria's function and what they need he knows very well. He always talks about sugar as the main source of food for bacteria and how efficient they can work once they get their dose of sugar, is something that has been one of his successful findings.

As mentioned earlier, school students are operating this plant at their school and are saving quite a lot of energy in the school. Two active and very responsible students of Jnana Probodini school Chinchwad explained how the model is not just a project of the school, but their friend whom they take care by giving timely input of food and in turn it gives them energy, manure and lots of lessons. I feel that schools having such LIVE and active projects managed by students themselves, not only make them better humans but also better role models of Sustainable lifestyles. Listening to them gave a new hope for the future generations and a Sustainable human society that coexists in harmony with its surrounding.

We also had SWACH representatives here who shared their experience of using Vaayu. The confidence they gained, showed how empowered they feel by using this technology and running it as a self sustainable model for organic waste management.

Then a group of Vaayu mitras, people who are using Vaayu at their homes daily, came up and shared their experience. Each Vaayu mitra is happy to have the Biogas in their house. They explained that there is a trial and testing phase with Vaayu, but once we get familiar with its behavior, it becomes a member of the family playing a crucial role and making us feel proud that we not only manage our organic waste but also generate our own fuel. 

One of the Vaayu mitra, a lady named Mamta, working on a farm and operating three Biogas plants needs a special mention. I liked her way of expressing her experience she was absolutely natural. She rightly mentioned that there is no waste in nature, even the leftover food has potential to generate energy if utilized appropriately. She clearly stated that if such installations of Biogas are available in the village through BachatGat schemes then the women in the village using smoke generating fuelwood that causes harmful impacts on their health as well as the forest will be healthy and smoke free. Though she is smoke free now because of Vaayu, she yearns that her fellow beings in the village should also get relief from the smoke. When we talk about Sustainable technologies they should be based on a win-win approach and her speech truly reflected it. Hats off to her!!!

Listening to all of their experiences and knowledge they have gained, it simply showed that how each one feels socially responsible and are happy to contribute their bit for the society. Dr Javdekar one of the senior most member using Vaayu stressed that how economically it is viable in his house where their yearly quota of LPG cylinders has been reduced drastically.

I wondered if generating fuel at source may be hazardous, however the plant is completely safe to be used at a household level expressed each and every Vaayu mitra. However space is something that is required for setting up a considerable capacity of Vaayu to make it viable. Nevertheless its worth an investment, may be at a society level, if not feasible at a household level, for ensuring sustainable management of organic waste.

Dr Priyadarshini Karve concluded the session where she stressed on the Citizens role in making a city Sustainable and how such local solutions are the key to resolve the global problems.

I am glad that we have video documented the entire workshop, the video will be available soon for all. Meanwhile if anyone wants to know more about Vaayu, please feel free to contact Priyadarshan S at priyadarshan.21@gmail.com

Pournima Agarkar. 

www.samuchit.com

MUSINGS FROM PRIYADARSHINI KARVE: Carbon Negativity... Revisited!

I wrote two blog posts Carbon Negativity - 1 and  Carbon Negativity - 2 in January 2018 - months before the IPCC 1.5 deg C report came out. Now with that report the urgency around measures towards carbon negativity has become heightened. I have no idea how the multi-million dollar technologies being touted by the big business interests across the world are going to pan out. I am however confident that with the waste biomass that all of us generate in varied quantities in our daily lives, we can do our bit towards carbon negativity. Biocharing is one of the techniques available to us for this purpose.

आयपीसीसीचा १.५ डिग्री सें. अहवाल येण्याच्या काही महिने आधी, जानेवारी २०१८ मध्ये, मी कार्बन निगेटिव्हिटी या विषयावर दोन ब्लॉग पोस्ट्स लिहिल्या होत्या -  कार्बन निगेटिव्हिटी - १ आणि  कार्बन निगेटिव्हिटी - २ . आता हा अहवाल आल्यानंतर कार्बन निगेटिव्हिटी तातडीने साध्य करण्याची गरज अधोरेखित झाली आहे. जगभरातील मोठे व्यावसायिक लक्षावधी डॉलर्सचा खर्च असलेल्या तंत्रांचा यासाठी प्रसार करत आहेत, त्यांची वाटचाल भविष्यात कशी होईल मला माहीत नाही. पण आपल्या आजुबाजूला आपल्याच दैनंदिन व्यवहारातून जो जैविक कचरा आपण निर्माण करतो आहोत, त्याचा वापर करून आपण कार्बन निगेटिव्हिटीसाठी थोडेफार योगदान निश्चित देऊ शकतो, याबद्दल मला खात्री वाटते. यासाठी जी तंत्र आपल्याला उपलब्ध आहेत, त्यापैकी एक बायोचारिंग हे आहे. 

A big thank you to all the participants of the Hands On Training on Climate Friendly Garden Waste Management on 7 Feb 2019. I hope that some of you have been inspired to give this process a try to deal with your garden waste AND to go carbon negative!

बागेतील काडीकचऱ्याचे क्लायमेट फ्रेंडली व्यवस्थापन या विषयावर ७ फेब्रुवारी २०१९ रोजी आयोजित कार्यशाळेत सहभागी झालेल्या सर्वांचे मी आभार मानते. आपल्यापैकी काहीजण आपल्या बागेतील काडीकचऱ्याच्या विल्हेवाटीसाठी या तंत्राचा वापर करून पहाण्यासाठी पुढे याल, व कार्बन निगेटिव्हिटीकडे वाटचाल कराल, अशी मी आशा करते!

Priyadarshini Karve

Samuchit Enviro Tech

प्रियदर्शिनी कर्वे

समुचित एन्व्हायरो टेक

#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful

   

Samuchit Enviro Tech.     samuchit@samuchit.com     www.samuchit.com 

My City My Responsibility - Waste Management Miracle

Dear All, 

Pune is one of the SMART cities and is still facing the challenges of managing waste in the city. I think its time we start taking management lessons from sustainable initiatives undertaken by small towns in making waste management a miracle. One such story is about a small town named Vengurla around 400 km from Pune under the leadership of Mr. Ramdas Kokare. 

Mr.Ramdas Kokare

Mr. Ramdas Kokare the former Chief Municipal Officer of Vengurla (now posted at Karjat) believes that apart from waste segregation at source, public participation is equally important for the city to be clean. Vengurla is a small town having around 12,400 people and generating almost 7 tonnes of wastes daily. 100% of the wastes is segregated into three different categories at the source like the wet, dry and hazardous. The wet waste is used for biogas generation producing electricity that powers machines used in the waste management facility. The dry waste is further segregated into 19 different types based on its reuse. All the nonrecyclable plastic is shredded, mixed with bitumen and used in road building making the roads more stronger. It was Mr. Kokare who implemented this in the town and transformed the waste landfill into waste management park. His management strategy simply involved taking rounds around the city just before coming to the office and while returning home, in order to see if the city is clean. He also motivated his subordinates to do the same! He and his subordinates personally talked with a certain number of people daily to educate them about the importance of waste segregation.  

Pune being an urban area having educated and active citizens is still struggling with segregation of wastes at the source into just wet and dry. Disposal of all the wastes is another issue completely. Our landfill sites are overused and people staying around the sites have to cope up with the nuisance. I cannot understand where does the problem lie? Are we not taking the Swach Bharat mission seriously? 

Mixed waste segregation

But then I feel people's participation is missing? Can the responsible citizens among us take inspiration from Mr. Kokare? Can we  educate each other about the importance of cleanliness in our surroundings in order to ensure a disease free locality? Can we advocate for segregation if we see someone not segregating the waste? Can we cooperate or coordinate with our local officers to ensure that our areas are clean? Can we ensure segregation of wastes into wet and dry and keep our sanitary wastes separately to ensure the hygiene of the waste collectors and processors?Segregation is a crucial first step. As Mr. Kokare says, mixed waste is a nuisance but segregated waste is a wealth. 

Pournima Agarkar.

My City My Responsibility: Think it through

Dear All, 

Hope you all find it exciting to do our bit to make our city livable or say Sustainable. It excites me because it gives me a sense of ownership of my city along with citizenship. And I believe that when you own it only then you care about it. We own this Earth and so we should take care of it.  

Regarding the solid waste problem that we are currently facing in our city, I am sure we as individuals are definitely doing our bit by segregating the wastes into wet waste and dry waste. As per revised city development plan our city generates around 1300 MT of solid wastes daily. Considering the current population, per person we are generating around 400 g of solid waste. Out of the 1300 MT, the household waste or domestic waste constitutes around 69%, i.e around 966 MT. While the remaining 31% is generated through street cleaning, hotels, markets, hospitals etc. Thus, in a way, 69% of the problem of solid waste is in our hands as citizens of Pune. 

This led me to think that by segregating the waste I am helping in better management of the solid waste which is a great thing. But if I can help in minimizing the waste will it be even better? What do I mean by minimizing the wastes? Here's an interesting image posted below, which I came across on social media and felt like sharing. I am not sure who is the creator though. 

Source: www.pinterest.nz

Its a simple flow diagram that directs you to think before buying is it really needed ? I know its easier said than done. But can we start thinking on these lines. It is about being concerned and thinking consciously about our actions which will lead us to Sustainability. We will discuss more about responsible consumption that can lead to responsible production in our next blog. 

Pournima Agarkar.

MUSINGS FROM PRIYADARSHINI KARVE: Sustainable Sixteen with Samuchit!

2016 is here. Samuchit Enviro Tech is entering the Sixteenth year of the century with a number of new initiatives. 

As a part of our Sustainably SMART Pune 2030 study project, we have started video documenting some of the good practices of sustainable living already present in Pune. Last week we uploaded the first of these videos on our YouTube channel. You can see the video here. Waste management has become one of the major challenges for urban India. The municipalities are failing to cope with the increasing amount of waste. The first video showcases the Kanhere family's successful adaptation of our biogas technology to deal with not just their own household food waste, but also the waste generated by a local flour mill. They have been using the biogas plant for more than 9 years. Please do check out the video. Also, do let us know of any good practices in sustainable urban living from Pune city that you know of! 

We are happy to launch a new product with the new year, named Samuchit Steam Cooker! 

It is a steamer fueled by charcoal, operating on a principle similar to that of our Sarai System, but its price is lower than the equivalent Sarai - Medium model, and it also allows the flexibility of using the 'cooker' part with other heat sources such as a wood stove or an LPG stove. Thus, this is the next generation of Sarai Cooking System, that has the added feature of multi-fuel operation, at a lower cost! 

And this is not all! 

We are also planning to venture into providing more sustainability focused educational services this year. I am in the process of designing a 10-12 hr Course on Carbon Footprinting, which will help academics as well as professionals in tracking the carbon emissions of their projects and ventures. This can be an important skill in view of the fact that India too will have carbon emission mitigation targets to meet now in view of the Paris agreement. Do let us know if you are interested in such a course. The details are still being worked out, so stay tuned for more information! 

Priyadarshini Karve

Director

Samuchit Enviro Tech

#BeModernBeResponsibleBeRespectful
    Samuchit Enviro Tech.     samuchit@samuchit.com     www.samuchit.com