Whether or not anything comes out of the Copenhagen conference, a clutch of Indians have already found their groove in the business of the future: green ventures. While some of them hope the climate conference will provide a fillip to their work, others feel becoming eco-friendly will be inevitable. DNA profiles some ecopreneurs.
Let there be solar light
When he was doing his Masters from a US university some years ago, Harish Hande decided he needed first-hand experience in what he was researching: Electricity, or the lack of it, in rural areas. So Hande spent time backpacking around Latin America, then lived two years in villages near Mangalore and in Sri Lanka where there was no power. “I couldn’t write about something I had not experienced,” says the 40-year-old head of Solar Electric Light Company (Selco), a renewable energy organisation based in Bangalore.
In the 15 years since he founded the company, Hande has helped install solar photo-voltaic panels on rooftops, various kinds of lamps, batteries and other power-capturing devices to provide alternative sources of electricity to 1.15 lakh homes. Through 21 centres across Karnataka and one in Ahmedabad, Hande’s company covers both the rural and urban poor. “We cater to needs rather than wants,” says the IIT Kharagpur alumnus. “If a farmer needs electricity for one hour in the morning to milk his cows, and for two hours in the evening for his children to study, that’s what we’ll give him.” Selco counts among its clients paddy and peanut farmers, street vendors, midwives and a variety of home-based workers.
Hande is not terribly excited about Copenhagen. “The issue of poverty has been thrown out of the window,” he says. “You can’t tell a poor person to stop buying kerosene or cutting wood. As long as climate change, and not poverty, is the theme, it will continue to be a tussle between the developed and developing world.”
There is such a strong link between poverty and sustainability, says Hande, that addressing the latter will also take care of climate change. “Copenhangen will not improve my business,” says the man whose company has made it to textbooks in Harvard and Yale for its micro-credit innovations. “Holistic solutions will.”
Waste is wealth
Anil Ranglani wants to turn Mumbai into a rainforest. Well, not exactly, but the city head of the waste management company Daily Dump, certainly wants it to be greener than it is now. And he has just the tools for it.
A year ago, Ranglani, 47, started selling large clay urns for some DIY composting by patrons. They can keep the three-tier pots at home and dump their garbage in it every day. After nine weeks — and with the help of some microbes and powders supplied by Ranglani — they get manure they can use to fertilise plants. “Compost pits are complicated, largescale things,” says the computer science engineer. “My products are all about the power of two. You need two sq feet of area to place the pot, two minutes to dump your wet waste in it every day, and it costs Rs2,000.”
Ranglani wants to overrun the city with the pots: Place them in homes, schools and colleges, corporate houses and even building societies — any place, in fact, that has a kitchen or a canteen and generates garbage. He is currently in talks with several organisations.
Ranglani’s pots can take care of waste generated by 10 families at a time. And Daily Dump provides a starter kit with rakes, gloves, powders, microbes, lemon grass (for odourless disposal) and even dry leaves to hasten the process of composting. The manure generated can be used to plant more trees in Mumbai, and also turn it into a zero-garbage city. “We need to convince people that waste is wealth, and find innovative ways to make its disposal lucrative,” he says.
Ranglani also believes in the power of one. “It’s great that India has committed to emissions cuts at Copenhagen, but how will the government keeps its promise if this pledge doesn’t percolate down to the people?” asks Ranglani. Then adds: “Each of us needs to pull our weight. We need to start small; have every household manage its waste. And then we need to scale up. With growing awareness post-conference, I’m looking to sell at least 500-1,000 pieces a month.”
Green architect Chitra Vishwanath lives in a mud house, works out of a mud office and is credited with setting up an entire neighbourhood of mud dwellings in Bangalore. The walls, ceilings and roofs are made of mud mixed with sand, quarry dust or fly ash, and stabilised with lime. Only five to seven per cent of the structures is cement. They recycle every drop of water, compost the waste generated by residents and are even fitted with eco-sanitation toilets.
“The next step is growing food on the roof of the house,” says Vishwanath, 47, who grows rice on hers. Biome, the company she set up with her husband two years ago, has built 500 such ‘alternative constructions’ across the country. “After Sanaa in Yemen and Kano in Nigeria, Bangalore is probably the third city in the world to have the largest number of mud homes,” says Vishwanath. “We need whole cities like this.”
Vishwanath views Copenhagen in a somewhat detached manner. “Sure, now more people will understand the merits of going green, and there will be fewer skeptics. But bitter fighting over emissions is hardly the way to go. I prefer [California governor] Arnold Schwarzenegger’s view that the approach to climate change should begin at the lower levels. We have already been doing it within the four walls of our homes, now others need to as well.”
On the other hand, Vishwanath hopes the conference will provide a fillip to her work, via awareness about alternative energy and water solutions. “I hope it will bring change in the minds of architects,” says Vishwanath. “Instead of thinking green buildings and putting in double-layered glass to keep the heat out, Copenhagen should now make them wonder how they can make a building without any glass at all.”
On any given day, you may catch eco-designer Nidhi Singh in an outfit made from organic bamboo or a jacket made from organic cotton, teamed with a bag or belt made from organic khadi. It’s not like the co-founder of Indigreen, a fashion and design outfit, believes in aggressive advertising. But she wants people to talk about her products in the hope that they will also eventually discuss things like being eco-conscious.
Singh’s products are certainly conversation starters: She melds Bollywood with the environment to come up with unforgettable T-shirt lines like Amitabh Bachchan from Deewar mouthing Mere Paas Dharti Maa Hai, or Gabbar Singh demanding Yeh Earth mujhe de de Thakur, or Shah Rukh from Swades musing, Gaon ja ke solar panel lagaoonga.
Singh spent two years researching before she set up Indigreen, to get the right mix of ingredients. She begged manufacturers to sell her 100 per cent organic cotton before they exported it all, located eco-friendly paints and then employed out-of-work Hindi film poster makers to draw her products. They aren’t cheap — some T-shirts cost as much as Rs3,000, and some bags, about Rs3,200 — but given Singh makes only 20 units of each piece, they are limited-edition and popular. “The stores I retail at are permanently out of stock,” says Singh, 30. And adds: “Irrespective of what comes out of Copenhagen, the economy is going green. So it would be a smart choice for people to do so too.”
We need cities of mud
Adarsh Vansay is usually busy chasing the wind. The renewable energy advocate, and director of Eco-Save India, usually carries his anemometer around with him – a laptop-sized box which has all his wind speed-and-direction measuring equipment. When he can, Vansay sets up wind turbines on the roof of a building to as a source of alternative energy, and channels the power generated into a battery.
In fact, his house in Bangalore is powered by a wind-solar hybrid installation, which has, according to Vansay, enabled him to completely “get off the grid”. He can run about 10 lights, two fans and some appliances (a mixer-grinder, even the washing machine) with power captured on his solar UPS. While Vansay has set up similar installations atop many buildings in Bangalore, the piece de resistance are the two 16-storey apartment blocks that use only power-conserving LED lights.
“All common spaces – the lobby, elevators, foyer, basement parking and other areas – are lit up by LED,” says Vansay. “Residential apartments can be huge guzzlers of power. The energy consumption, with LED, has come down by 70 per cent, and the buildings will recover their investment in a year and a half.” In time, Vansay expects, the building society will also pass on the benefits of saved costs to the residents.
Vansay first began by conducting programmes around renewable energy solutions in the rural areas. He has placed solar and wind installations in homes, offices and even some farmhouses in and around Bangalore. Recently, he even carried out a street-lighting project in Lonavala, and is currently scoping options in Alibaug. “What’s happening in Copenhagen is disappointing,” says Vansay, 38.
“It’s evident who has to make the larger effort to control emissions. But this new brand of ecopreneurs are not waiting around for an agreement. The number of solar panel or wind turbine manufacturers, and other small integrators, would’ve grown anyway, with increased awareness, funding and government subsidies, even without Copenhagen or Kyoto.” In fact, adds Vansay, Copenhagen, by turning the mandate of technology transfer into mere information sharing, has taken a step backwards. “Now we’ll have to work harder to create new technologies, where we could have simply saved time, money and effort on improving existing ones.”
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