Posts Tagged ‘eco heros’

A huge gift

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

Wipro Ltd chairman Azim Premji has transferred 213 million shares, equal to an 8.7% stake in the company in which he held 79.5% at the end of September, and valued at Rs8,846 crore to an eponymous trust as an endowment, to fund the development activities of the Azim Premji Foundation.

In a statement issued by the foundation, Azim Premji said: “We believe that good education is crucial to building a just, equitable, humane and sustainable society. All our efforts, including the university that we are setting up, are focused on the underprivileged and disadvantaged sections of our society.”

Based on the 300% dividend Wipro declared in 2009-10, the 213 million shares would have earned Rs127.8 crore.

The irrevocability of the trust means that its mandate and terms of creation cannot be changed, even by Premji.

Powerful , inspiring action by Azim Premji. Ripples of this action will be felt by multitude of individuals , families , communities,India and the planet.

Inspiring a Clean(er) Planet

Friday, August 20th, 2010

One of our Japanese retail clients recently informed us that their store team were mighty impressed by Clean Planet.

Inspired by Clean Planet they have done away with plastic bags , plastic clips, metal pins , plastic band for collar , tissue paper. Garments are soft packed and given to the customers in paper bags.

One of the many ways in which we are inspiring…and enabling a Clean(er) Planet !

Stylishly green restaurant

Friday, July 16th, 2010

“A kitchen surrounded  by fertile soil where vegetables and herbs thrive … Where daylight shines in from all sides and where the chefs are free to express their creativity daily using the best the season has to offer. It seems an obvious concept, but I spent twenty years surrounded by white tiles under fluorescent lighting before I came up with it.” – chef Gert Jan Hageman

Restaurant De Kas has its own greenhouse and garden near the restaurant, where they grow Mediterranean vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. They also have a large field about  10 kilometres from Amsterdam in the Purmer Polder, where they  grow seasonal vegetables.

In the world teeming with McDonalds , Pizza Hut and other industrial food serving outlets it’s wonderful to see a restaurant that is built around fresh food grown and harvested by the restaurant team.

De Kas is more an exception because of the sheer space needed for such an initiative . Yet , that are restaurants with the luxury of space who choose to adopt the beaten bath. Increasingly hotels are beginning to grow some herbs / vegetables in their gardens (hotels tend to have more space than a restaurant ).

What’s striking about De Kas is the combination of eco friendliness and style that makes it so distinctive.

Stylishly green hotel

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

An Indonesian businessman contributes to environmental wellness on a bike connected to a generator inside the “100 percent green” Crowne Plaza Hotel in Copenhagen. The energy produced by pedaling guests is stocked in a battery before being injected into the hotel’s power supply.

The Crowne Plaza’s concrete and steel tower is covered in some 1,500 that produce 170,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is enough to power 55 households. In the basement of the 86-meter (232-feet) skyscraper there is a geothermal well which covers the hotel’s heating and needs, slashing its energy bill by about 90 percent.

And in each of the 366 rooms, personal care accessories are biodegradable, taps are equipped with water-saving devices and all light bulbs are low-energy.

But that doesn’t mean the Intercontinental chain’s first “all-eco” hotel has clients roughing it.

“Everything was thought out with technologies respectful of the environment, without sacrificing quality, comfort, and the feeling of being at a four-star hotel,” spokeswoman Toemmergaard insists.

Wall coverings, carpeting, and even the feet on the design furniture are made from recycled materials and are guaranteed not to contain chemical products, while the computers have power-saving screens.

And the guests who redeem their electricity-production vouchers dine on organic food, and the high-tech kitchen grinds all its garbage and sends it to a local  biogass central to be transformed into fuel.

Brilliant idea .  It would taken the hotel meticulous effort to plan , create and source all the materials. The end result is an eco-hotel that’s an inspiring example to all businesses to think non-linearly and holistically about sustainability.

The eco-paradise wasn’t an easy sell to the slightly sceptical Intercontinental chain, Toemmergaard concedes.

“Often, when people think environmentally friendly, they think of smaller organic products that are less appealing than traditional offerings,” she says, adding that there had been a real fight “to convince the chain we had made the right choice.”

In the end, the franchises’s owners agreed to carry the project through because they believed Copenhagen needed a hotel that reflected its green ambitions, Toemmergaard says.

The bicycle-filled capital, which is “one of the world’s showcases for the environment and quality of life, which wants to become the first emission-free capital in 2025, should have a hotel that fits that image,” she says.

The carbon-dioxide neutral hotel cost some 125 million euros (156 million dollars) to build and is about five percent more expensive to run than a normal hotel, but the owners expect to make up the difference.

“In five or six years we will have a return on our investment that shows that it pays to make an effort for the environment,” Toemmergaard says.

( via physorg.com )

Flower power

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

The Ganesha at the small roadside shrine under a tree in Indiranagar is practically masked by jasmine and marigold flowers. “These are just the decorations for a regular day,” says IT professional V Vinod. “When there’s a festival, there’s at least five times this amount. Imagine the tonnes of flowers all the temples, large and small, across the city must be using and throwing away,” says Vinod.

..So Vinod’s idea is that temples should collect the flowers thrown away every day and turn them into manure. “It’s not expensive, it’s not hard, it’s not even a new idea. It’s just a simple sustainable solution to turn waste to wealth,” he says…

..He believes all temples, however small, can also turn their waste into manure. His idea is to have community collection and composting spots for the flowers from various smaller temples. “Even houses can go and dump their flower waste there,” he says, adding that his own house generates about two kg of flower waste during a festival. “Even parks can compost their leaves in these common bins,” he adds.

Florists , hotels , any place that has flowers to dispose should start to compost them instead of tossing it into the garbage pile.

Highly doable. Solutions like these definitely help make a Cleaner Planet.

p.s – political parties in India should take to composting flowers considering the quantity of floral garlands they use to garland not just their ‘live’ party bosses but also their statues and hoardings.

The Sapling project

Friday, June 4th, 2010

Much needed initiative in Mumbai . Check out details at The Sapling Project .

Pl participate in the sapling plantation drive on 6 June at various locations in India.

Calling all superheroes

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

The rate at which we are generating, consuming and disposing a non-bio degradable substance aka Plastic – it would spawn a new kind of fictional hero or at least add a new task to already created fictional superheroes.

Circa 1990 – Superman/ Spiderman rescues the world from the bad guy(s)

In the future the super hero would not only be fighting evil folks . He / she would be swooping in on the Pacific garbage patch and similar heaps of non-biodegradable , earth polluting material and flinging them into outer space. All the superheroes would need to team up to clear up the plastic choking the planet.

The superheroes like Superman/Spiderman are fictional . The plastic on the planet is real . We need billions of people to become eco heros by making sustainable , responsible choices. At this point in time there is no answer in terms of solutions to bio degrade the plastic that is choking land and sea. The least we can do is to reduce the rate of addition to the pile.