A few days ago, I asked a friend from Maharashtra whether the plastic ban was still being enforced. She grinned widely before saying, “YES!” A few months ago, India hosted the 2018 World Environment Day, with the theme of ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’. The idea was to drastically cut down on single-use plastic. One of the…
When I first started to compost my biodegradable waste, I had a pot with earthworms and indiscriminately put everything I generated into it. Very soon, the little fellows began to die and baby cockroaches started to take over. Between cockroaches and maggots, the composting was happening very quickly, but there was a high chance that…
In most parts of India, monsoon is a beautiful season. The scorching heat of the summer starts to simmer down, and the first monsoon showers arrive with the smell of petrichor. It is also the season of mangoes, jackfruits, pineapples, and jamun. In many places, it brings a new season of blooms (we have adopted…
The first (and often difficult) step in reducing waste is to carry a cloth bag from home while shopping. Often this is followed by an attempt at composting biodegradable waste – either within the home, or in small patches of land nearby. Some ambitious folk even convince their entire building or complex to segregate their…
When I was a kid, torrential rains in Chennai from cyclones of the northeast monsoons usually meant ‘Rain Holidays’. The State Government would declare that all educational institutions be shut, and I would spend the day at home, enchanted by the pleasant surprise. This usually meant finding ways to amuse myself, without going out (or…
Our Organic Terrace Gardening Workshop is back on Sunday the 22nd of July! This session: Myths & Facts on Home Veggie Garden 1. The topic will cover details on how easily a beginner is attracted into veggie gardening without understanding the simple dynamics of the home garden. 2. Myths and facts of a home veggie…
World Environment Day whooshed past us this week (June 5th) and the theme for the year was beating plastic pollution – especially, disposable single-use plastic. This annual event of the United Nations chooses a host country each year – an opportunity for the nation to examine its challenges and address them. For 2018, India has…
What do you do when you are stuck alone with a young child, and your entire support system has vanished? My husband was travelling, my mummy-buddies were in different cities, and my domestic helper was being, well, erratic. This meant that my son and I had the gloriously intense experience of being with each other…
What is 1.6 million square kilometres in area (half the size of the India), seen in open ocean, far from most inhabited islands, and thousands of kilometres away any continental landmass? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is a region in the northern Pacific Ocean, between North America and Japan, that is bound by a…
It started really small – my personal journey towards sustainable living. I left a job that generated an enormous amount of hazardous waste and began to segregate and compost the wet waste I generated at home. Soon my mother joined me and we started thinking of ways to live with a light footprint. A couple…