Category: Nature / Environment

** Two recycling projects from Assam win global awards

The waste-based projects won €10,000 and six months of mentoring

Two waste-based projects in Assam have won an international award for taking their businesses to a higher, greener level.

Shree Guru Plastics and Inside Out, two enterprises based in Guwahati, won €10,000 and six months of business mentoring to help make their ideas a reality.

They were among the 100 entries from across the world for a zero waste city challenge organised by WasteAid, a U.K.-based international NGO between April and July.

** Tamil Nadu teenager Vinisha Umashankar makes a clarion call at COP26

Young people have every reason to be angry with leaders who have failed to deliver, Ms. Umashankar said.

As a child, Vinisha Umashankar, a Class 10 student, used to walk with her mother and a bag full of washed and dried clothes to get them ironed from a couple who ran a mobile ironing cart in her street in Tiruvannamalai town in northern Tamil Nadu.

She saw how her clothes were ironed with charcoal-filled cast-iron boxes by the couple, sweating as they worked in the heat. She returned, not just with her ironed clothes, but with an intent to make their lives better and the world around her cleaner.

** Ganga most visited pilgrim site in world, attracts over 2 crore people every year, says Union Minister

Union Tourism and Culture Minister G.Kishan Reddy on Tuesday said Ganga is the most visited pilgrim site in the world and over 2 crore people come to pay their respect every year to it.

“Hinduism teaches that Ganga is not just a river for bathing, it is a sacred river that is why cleaning it is our prime responsibility. People should make it a custom to keep Ganga clean,” he said at the Ganga Utsav.

** Rice Mela ends, over 150 varieties displayed

Did you know that Kattuyanam is the oldest rice variety in the world? It is over 2,400 years old. The red rice variety’s name is a combination of two words — Kattu or Kadu which means forest and Yanai meaning elephant. The plant can grow up to seven feet tall, and even an elephant can hide in the crops. 

It is rich in antioxidants, controls blood sugar, is good for skin and normalises bowel movement. Around 150 such indigenous rice varieties were on display at the Rice Mela organised by Thanal Trust, an environment NGO and Organic Bazar at Jawahar Nagar.  

** National Mission for Clean Ganga gets registered in Guinness Book of World Records

The National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) got registered in the Guinness Book of World Records on the first day of the Ganga Utsav — the River Festival 2021 for the highest number of photos of handwritten notes uploaded on Facebook in an hour.

Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat posted his message on the Ganga on Facebook, after which the Guinness activity was opened for the public at large.

** Fruit tree from the Ghats set to take root in farmlands

Called Moottilpazham, this plentiful wild fruit is soon set to make its way to our gardens as well as diet, thanks to an initiative by the Kerala Forest Department. An 11-minute documentary film that propagates the lesser-known tale of this fruit and its potential for cultivation is slated for a release next week.

According to G. Prasad, Assistant Conservator of Forest (Social Forestry), who conceptualised the movie, Moottilpuli, the tree, is endemic to the southern region of the Western Ghats that extends from South Canara to Kanyakumari. “The tree, Baccaurea courtallensis, is a member of Euphorbiaceae family and the fruit derives its name from the way it bunches up at the base of the tree and even touches the ground. It blooms in February and March while the fruit matures between June to August,” he explained.

Kerala

** JNCASR-Bengaluru scientists devise way to convert carbon dioxide to methane without toxicity

Bengaluru scientists have devised a toxic-free method that converts the most common greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO2) to methane (CH4) – known to be the cleanest fossil fuel – a process that can effectively help in reducing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels which is a major climate change concern.

The scientists from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru, achieved this using non-metal catalysts, unlike procedures that are in use, which are found to release toxic gases in the process.

In doing so, the scientists, led by Professor Tapas Kumar Maji from the Chemistry and Physics of Materials Unit of JNCASR, have designed a cost-effective metal-free catalyst to achieve the conversion by absorption of visible light.

** A unique story of creating a ‘plantain bank’ at Vengeri

Babu Parambath cultivates 50 varieties from India and abroad.


At first glance, they all look the same until you read the name boards kept on the foot of every plantain shoot and Babu Parambath describes the speciality of each of them. Then you start noticing the minor details that make this plantain grove one of its kind.

Mr. Parambath, known for his several ventures in the waste management front as the project coordinator of Niravu waste management company, has collected 50 different varieties of plantains from not just India, but from other parts of the world too, over a period of one-and-a-half years since the first COVID-induced lockdown.

He has one or two shoots of each of them planted in the 10 cents next to his home at Vengeri.

** Nivetha Thomas scales Mount Kilimanjaro, is game for more expeditions

“My eyes welled up when I reached the summit. It took me three hours to hike the last 50 metres,” says actor Nivetha Thomas, who scaled Mount Kilimanjaro a few days ago. At 5895 metres above sea level, Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, East Africa, is the highest single free-standing mountain in the world.

Nivetha was accompanied by Telangana mountaineer Poorna Malavath, her coach Shekhar Babu Bachinepally and 15 crew members.