New Environmental Cusswords

Some new environmental cusswords for your vocabulary to start the week with. Add your own! From my column with Sunday Mid-Day.

Environmental Cost of a Cricket Tournament

The 2019 Cricket World Cup is on in full swing in England. I don't mean to be a spoilsport; I have grown up with a devotion to cricket unlike to any other sport, like the average Indian man. Albeit not carrying as high a carbon footprint as other wasteful sports like Golf, cricket does have a lot of scope to get greener, specially with climate change and water crises worsening in many parts of the world.

The comic appears in my column with Mid-Day.

Rainwater Harvesting- World Water Day

Woodpeckers and rainwater harvesting! Woodpeckers locate their nests at angles such that the nest faces away from the direction of the rain and is hence naturally water-proofed. But if one does make up his mind to harvest rainwater, it'd be as easy as this for him!

Catch this cartoon in The Hindu's BL-ink today. Happy World Water Day!

Water conservation

Published in the June issue of Sustainuance (http://www.sustainuance.com/)

This is something we all come across in every office building, workplace and corporate house. I have never understood why bottled water is regarded as somewhat of a 'status symbol' and treated as a pre-requisite for any conference, meeting or event, in spite of the availability of drinking water otherwise in most office buildings. I also know people who would not address a running faucet simply because it isn't their property! According to a study by the EPA, letting your faucet run for five minutes uses as much energy as running a 60 watt light bulb for fourteen hours! Wouldn't it be wiser to look at water and energy efficiency as a long-term strategy for not only eco-friendliness but also a cost-effective solution; rather than spending needlessly on bottled water for every event your company hosts?

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Troubled Tusker

Water pollution during the Ganesh festival has been reaching alarming levels of late. Huge idols made of Plaster of Paris and coloured in toxic chemicals are immersed into both inland water bodies and seas. It doesn't end there; this is usually accompanied with a lot of food, flowers, offal and plastic wastes being dumped into the water. Aquatic life has suffered gravely at the hands of Indian festivals. Although several groups have emerged that practise eco-friendly idol making and immersion, a complete switch must be made from P.O.P to biodegradable materials urgently to prevent further aquatic hazards.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Cartoons on Water Conservation

Water conservation encompasses the policies, strategies and activities to manage fresh water as a sustainable resource to protect the water environment and to meet current and future human demand. Energy conservation, habitat conservation and sustainability are the three main goals of water conservation policies. A wide variety of solutions have been proposed and implemented ranging from home to community solutions, but a lot still remains to be accomplished considering the amount of water that is wasted everyday.

This work by Rohan Chakravarty is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.