TMM 2 - Trip to Mutayala Maduvu

It was bright sunny afternoon. Rather than bright i should say it was sulking hot but the excitement surpassed the heat!!! I was coming back from my rehersal spot to catch up our eco-friends. Gosh it was already 2.20 the traffic was getting on to my nerves. Called up our CEE (Chief Execution Expert) to find out if they are waiting for me, But realised that the rest of the resources are yet to turn up at KFC. Finally reached the spot ofcourse 10 mins late. There i see CEE is all charged up with a different attire all together to rock the day inspiring people around. In few mins i met other folks FM (Facilities Manager), Feeding Expert, Don sisters, analyst, K Guru and the Scorpion King!!! and not to forget an Angel !!!! More on these people later. We started off with quick introduction among ourselves, somebody was shouting we dont have a camera...and with in few minutes comes the Camera (Angel hain naa!!! ). A smooth journey from KFC CMH road to Electronic city. On the way ahead we started off the traditional "Dumb Charades" ..ooff what movies tora tora tora..uncle tom's cabin..it was great fun...With in no time we realised we entered one Zammed narrow lane which was slight a tussle for our gaddi to move out. Here entered the jumbo ride. The entire path till mutalamadavu was horrible, inspite of this the journey was quite comfortable. As soon as we reached the main spot our CEE has given the instructions how to carry about the operation and quickly we were ready to pull over the sleeves and join the hurdle. Our main focus was only to collect forms of plastic. We carried our operation for more than an hour and half. Gosh we collected somewhere around more than 12 bags of Garbage (Remind you only plastic). The worst part of the garbage is the pepsi cups and the ghutka packets. They are just innumerable. For a moment i thought the Govt should increase the cost of Ghutka by 100 times.We loaded the bags into the Tempo that has been specially booked for this purpose by our offsite consultant alias Quick Gun Murugan!!!.
Ofcourse we had a snap session with the garbage we collected, followed by a snackdin session... i mean something more than snacks and less than dinner...thank god I didnt have my meal in the noon!!! Our feeding expert (with lotz of zeal even aftert hat tiresome operation ) was on a run, literally feeding everyone. He is just unstoppable. The elder Don Sister was just taking every chance to grab the Dahi having executed her task gracefully!!! After having a nice food session facilated by our FM we were on a move, for we have to get back to the city to dump our garbage. At this moment i would like to tell little about our silent chota Don sister - she executes her work silently ofcourse sticking to the basics perfectly. On the way back we discovered singer SHAAN in the form of our analyst (waise tho baaki sab bhi achha gaa rahen hain except that my songs were dumped!!! ). He has given one fantastic advice (analyst jo hain!!!! ) details of which will be told later. We were trying to figure out on the way where to dump the Garbage . Thanks to KGuru...for his kannada skills has helped us in negotiating the driver to tell exactly where to dump it. finally We decided to dump it near tippasandra.....ending with Our FM calculating the economy of the trip and spelling out the exact costs and future plan!!!

We were back to where we began. It was over before one realized it had started. But that the fate of every great experience we‘ve had!

Few key points out of this expereince :

We should involve local people in ensuring they participate in these kindaa programmes. We can pay them on per bag basis. Very well said Mr Analyst!!!

• One it reduces the operations cost. people can volunteer (on a rotation basis) to get the garbage collected probably once in fortnite.
• Two you are providing some means of living through a good cause.
  

If at all you are wondering why the !$%^ you are getting the garbage all the way to blore, remember it those people from out of that place who are the main source for that innumerous amount of garbage. Had it been like every individual visiting that place get the garbage back and puts in his locale bin the scenario would have been different. So no harm in getting the garbage back to Blore. However we need to identify some means of recycling this garbage rather than the plastic getting its place in land fills.


Well thats all about the trip in brief!!!

Want to know the real characters out of these Pseudo Terminolgies i used , then here I introduce the resources :

CEE - Chief Execution Expert - Ms Roopa
FM - Facilities Manager - Ms Bindiya
Feeding Expert - Mr Mayur
DON Sister's - Shamala (Elder Don ) & Aruna - ( Chota Khamooshi Don )
Analyst - Vishnu - (!!M B speaks...)
K.Guru - Kannada Guru - Tejaswi
Scorpion King - Sandeep Chakraborty with his Scorpio - thank you so much for reducing the expenses!!!!
Offsite consultant alias Quick Gun Murugan!!!. - Sameer Tupaki -
Angel - always Ahead of us for everything we need - Lakshmi

Guessing what I will call myself !!!!




Letz catch up soon in another Fun Filled activity



This is Save-Nature's spokesperson (Bhakwas bolu!!! )

Vijay Kumar Yenne

reporting from BloggersSpot....Over and out!

Meeting with the Commercial Manager, KSTDC(Hotels)

Here's updating you all with a morning well-spent !

Thejaswi and me reached Khanija Bhavan at around 10:30 this morning and met Mr. M. Subramaniam, a very approachable person:

Minutes of the Meeting:

1) Waste management ? - initially he was reluctant and tried to brush it off saying it was not their concern since they do not own the place, but then he was honest enough to accept that they were the cause for most of the plastics around and he'll definitely work with us to get that sorted out -one of his ideas being that "We'll transfer food contents in plastic covers to Paper bags before selling to customers, as per the process followed at Bannerghatta"'

2) He suggested we present our thoughts about resolving the issue and what we expect from them, over mails and keep him updated about our activities.

3) He mentioned the make-over of Muthyalmaduvu - A project that will be started in a month or so. Said they would definitely keep in mind spreading awareness about cleanliness and place dust-bins along the path. [Shared info about the architect who would be involved too, not sure if this is of any importance ? ]

Well, he did give us a very rosy picture of what will be done and that he would be glad to help us out, but this can happen only if we are able to approach him as a more professional group. Maybe we should again have a meeting with him and think of ways to get him to actually back us up and since he seems to be open to our objective it shouldn't be really difficult.

His visiting card:

M. Subramaniam
Commercial Manager (Hotels)
KSTDC
#49, 2nd Floor, Khanija Bhavan, West Entrance,
Race Course Road, Bangalore - 560 001
Off: 22352901, 902, 22352580
Fax: 080-22352963
E-mail: kstdc@vsnl.in
Website - www.kstdc.nic.in


Thanks,
Shamala
for Save Nature

first step in mekedatu...

Let me start from the day 1 plan. On march 4th we(Shilpa, Hari,Lakshmi,
Suresh, me,Bindiya,Amar) met and decided on where to go and we had 9 in
our list but due to various reasons only 6 could make it.

We started our journey from Bangalore early in the morning at 6.45 AM
(definitely early on Sunday!!). We met; sat in the car started the
journey we were getting to know each other as most of us were strangers
till we met. We were talking about what we are supposed to go do there
and were planning how to educate those localities.

The climate is becoming hotter and  we are tired before we reach there!
We reached there finally!! Wow we could see very little water and few
people (as were early) and loads of waste. We took a quick glace of the
place around and the beautiful stream.

But no body spent much time looking and admiring as all of us knew why
we were there!!!
And the scariest part was how we will complete if it gets hotter!!!!!
We all started to plan which place to cover how'll look after the stuff
who'll remind all of us to take water(very imp) in between within few
min we started and we are picking up the plastics!!! Strange really
strange I could never imagine people can make any place so dirty. What
not they use and throw!! '

We were amazed…. Our garbage collection bag is getting filled faster
and faster and the climate is getting hotter and hotter. We all worked
to our best to clean the place…Some people saw us doing it and instead
of throwing the candy (plastic) on the ground they gave it to us some
really felt responsible!! We wish there was dustbin!!!!

We actually didn't foresee the outcome before we stared. The outcome
was just amazing… We look back at the place from top.
How clean it looks!!!!...
How satisfied we all were!!! We forgot the pain we went through…
We came to the place we catch the bus to our surprise with in few
hours people have dirtied that place too…!! How insensitive!!!!!
We took rest for 5 min there and stared to clean that place too!!
Guess what....
There were other people who came to have fun were inspired by us!!!
And helped us clean the place!! Is not that amazing!!.

We could achieve the target to some extent. :-)

We had great fun cleaning….  :-)

Regards,
Shweta S
for Save Nature

Converting plastic waste into petrol

"ALKA Zadgaonkar believes in creating something of value even out of waste. Since 2002, she has been demonstrating to Indian and foreign experts how waste plastic can be converted into petrol, offering a solution to one of the world’s biggest environment problems—-waste plastic disposal.

Head of the Department of Organic Chemistry at Nagpur’s G.H. Raisoni College of Engineering, Zadgaonkar recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) for manufacturing and marketing petroleum products generated from waste plastic. She has been given Rs 5.9 million for the pilot project.

How did she hit upon the idea? "Both plastics and petro-products are hydrocarbons. The only difference is that in plastics the chain of molecules is longer. So, I wondered if it was possible to break the chain into small segments to convert it into value-added fuel. I started working on this idea in 1995 and my first successful experiment was in 1998-99," says 40-year-old Zadgaonkar.

Zadgaonkar’s method is simple: shredded plastic waste - free of oxygen – is heated with coal and a secret chemical. The products include fuel range liquids, coke and LPG range gases. About 1 kg of plastic and 100 gm of coal churn out a litre of fuel, which contains the gasoline range. More processing, Zadgaonkar claims, yields refined petrol.

"We can use any waste plastic recycled any number of times," says Zadgaonkar. She has received a patent from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)."

Above are some parts of an article in The Sunday Tribune dated Sunday, September 28, 2003. Full article can be read here. Now this is something we have been looking for a long time in our mission of Clean and Green. As soon as we came to know about it, we contacted her. Following are the important points from that discussion:

1. The plant can not be rented as it costs around 6 crore rupees.
2. The product has been launched commercially recently so it brings some complications of its own.
3. Currently there is no plant installed in Bangalore neither they are collecting the waste from Bangalore (through any agency etc) as capacity of this plant is 5 MT/day and Nagpur is producing 30 MT/day of waste.
4. She does not have any plan to install one such plant in Bangalore in near future.

Now we have seen a ray of hope. Do we have something like this in Bangalore? If you know, please share it with us. More about Alka's effort can be read at http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Magazine/story/alkaZ/

Pritesh Jain
for Save Nature

ps: photo copied from goodnewsindia.com article. For illustration purpose only.

first step....

The IDEA of "Save Nature" is in the hearts of many people for a long time. Just that due to some reason it was not coming to life. Finally on 19th Feb, the group decided to take the first giant step. Muthyalmadu became the chosen one destinition. Amar, Hari, Abhay, Sashi, Shyamala, Bindiya, Roopa, Tejaswi chose to spend one fine Sunday with nature nurturing their DREAM. Dream of Plastic Free Clean and Green Environment.

Thanks to the dedicated effort of Amar and Bindiya all the logistics of food and transportation was taken care of. A little bit of antakshari, a little bit of stopping to pick up water, look for batteries that no-one had and a film roll, the group reached Muthyalmadu pretty early before the sun got too hot.

The place was litter strew and so awful that initially seemed like we have hit a jackpot. We armed ourselves with the gloves we had carried and the garbage bags and we spread ourselves over the stretch from near the KSTDC restaurant to where the staircase leads you down to the stream and the temple.

The amount of plastic we encountered was phenomenal, plastic bottles, ice cream cups, gutkha cover, toffee wrappers (small bits lodged in difficult places), on tree branches, under thorny bushes, in the stream just about everywhere where the eyes could see.

we collected and disposed off with 16 whopppppiing large sized bags of plastic !!!!

Really an amazing start. A fulfilling experience. Moreover this trip showed us the challanges in front of us. An eye opener in true sense. More about the discussion later.
keep watching for more....

Pritesh Jain
for Save Nature
(based on the mail sent by Roopa to the group)

an introduction...

Save Nature is not just any group. Its an IDEA, a DREAM. A dream, that we can have plastic free green and clean environment. Started by a group of young enthusiastic people, it is right now based in Bangalore. In our modest means, we have started with most popular picnic spots and trekking routes (as most of us have been to these places and could see the garbage spread there). So right now, we are funded and supported on individual contribution. Here is some more information about the group (taken from the presentation made by the group members)

Our Aim:

To route plastic out from often visited picnic spots in and around Bangalore.

To find out ways to Dispose the plastic in eco-friendly way.

To create awareness about the idea of sensible usage of plastic.

Our slogan: Reduce Reuse Recycle (RRR)

Our Karmabhumi: To start with we have chosen two places around Bangalore - Muthyamadu (Anekal) and Mekedaatu. We plan to visit these locations every alternate weekend (mostly Saturday) and have a round of clean up.

Our funds and accounts: Right now we are working on the principle of "spend and split". Each person is assigned a responsibility; finally cost is split between the members who went on the trip. All money is from personal contribution as of now, though a proper account of usage is maintained.

You can look forward for a fun-filled satisfaction-rich experience with us. We have a yahoo group to keep the information about the activities. You can join it at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/savenature/ . Lots of good and relevant discussions take place on the group.

Pritesh Jain
for Save Nature