Going green

Every year, Employees of Sun Microsystems dedicate a week for Global volunteering program. India Engineering Center (IEC) is also very active during this week. One of the events as a part of the Volunteer program, was to clean up the plastic waste at 'Sangama', a popular picnic spot at the intersection of rivers kaveri and Arkavati. Close by is a 'MekedaaTu', another famous getaway from Bangalore. Lot of tourists visit these places every year and leave a lot of plastic waste. Employees of Sun along with volunteers from 'Clean and Green' go on a cleaning program along the banks of river kaveri. Last year (2007), we all had been to Muttatthi and this year they had chosen 'Sangama'. Along with my family (mom, wife, sister and nephew) I joined the team of volunteers at Sangama. The place was a big mess with plastic covers, bottles, gutka packets etc. A group of 60 volunteers worked for 3 hours in the scorching heat to collect 220 KG of plastic waste. The plastic waste was handed to a plastic company in Kanakpura who use it for laying tar for road.
Last year we had collected 303 kgs of plastic at muttatti. You can read about it on April 14 2007 - Mega Acitivity @ Muttathi

The same day evening, I had to attend a wedding reception. I met a few friends at the wedding and told them about the clean and green activity and they appreciated our effort. In most of the South Indian weddings, the guests are given 'Tamboola' (coconut and beetle leaves) as a tradition. It is believed that the guests who attend the wedding should not be sent empty handed and hence there is a tradition of giving tamboola. The practice is to give the tamboola in a plastic cover. My friend told me that in the wedding, they had decided not to use plastic and hence they gave the tamboola in a paper bag, with a very nice note on it. The note requested people to reduce the usage of plastic. click on the image to read the note.
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