The Environment News

Since childhood, I have been observing the brutality with which we humans have treated the environment, which has highly sensitized me towards environmental issues, imbibing in me an inherent zeal to work for the earth and spread more awareness about the problems encountered by nature. Wrapping up my freshman year at college, I got the opportunity to work with Chintan, channelising my interests into something productive and exciting.  Working at Chintan was a very enjoyable experience for me, being surrounded by like-minded people with a collective passion for environmental conservation. My work at the internship included reading and researching about various topics and soaking knowledge from any source possible.  Researching about E-Waste, my seniors at Chintan sent me a documentary about the improper disposal of E-Waste and the far reaching implications it had on us. The documentary was called "E-Waste, Citizens at Risk" and watching it, brought about in me a ...

   If we try to figure out the mindset of the human race, for most part of our existence on the planet we have persistently striven for economic, scientific and technological development. Blinded by the extensive strife to ascend the pinnacle of success, we have dismissed the obstructive effects of our activities which have rather left an unerasable mark on the face of the earth. Through our constant efforts to scale the heights of economic and technological advancements and increasing inclination towards a more capitalistic mindset, we have changed the environment surrounding us in many ways. Changes which might even backfire on the human race in form of "unnatural" disasters or rather "Human Induced Natural Disasters". We often blame humans for climate change, but our actions have also had a huge impact on the changing geography and topography. As per a report published by Al Jazeera on Man-made disasters, between 2004 and 2010, small landslides (not caused by ...

THE CURRENT SCENARIO Source : The Hindustan Times The current situation of waste disposal and treatment in the capital narrates a story of utter mismanagement and unsustainability. As of  now,  to ensure proper management and disposal, the civic bodies have hired concessionaires who collect waste from door to door and segregate the waste at the site. the recyclable garbage goes to recycling sites and the rest is dumped in one of the four existing landfills. A fleet of 409 trucks are engaged in the process. However, at the ground level this system is in a state of complete chaos. The RWAs have often complained that the waste collection on a daily basis is non existent and door to door collection is just a mere illusion forcing people to dump waste in nooks and empty plots of land creating miniature landfills. Out of all the waste generated in the capital, about 50% is fit for composting, and 30% is recyclable which leaves 20% of the waste to be dumped in the landfills....

The Earth has been around for a 4.5 billion years now and throughout it's existence, our planet has witnessed changing climatic conditions from a ball of fire to even ice ages. But never has ever the earth experienced what we are witnessing first hand, which I like to call human induced climate change. Even after the gruesome act of humanised environmental destruction, there are some of us who dismiss the gravity of climate change as something unreal and nonexistent. So, I would really like to bring them closer to reality before it hits them in the face hard. The natural changes in the earth's climatic cycles have occurred due to certain variations in the earth's orbit, altering the solar flux. But if we look at the past few trends of climate change, the deviations in the climate patterns have been largely associated with the exponential growth of Carbon Dioxide emissions, accelerating the Greenhouse Effect. source: https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ Ancient and s...

There is no doubt in the fact that Diwali is the biggest festival in India and with a population of about 1.3 billion, it is one of the biggest festivals of the world too. Truly the homecoming of Lord Rama is marked by the homecoming of happiness, prosperity, love, faith and obviously the ever despised gas chamber like conditions.  Post Diwali 2016, we witnessed what wikipedia calls " The Great Delhi Smog ". The Indian Capital was breaking records with its severe pollution levels, choking the citizens, infants and the animals. In 2016 November, the national capital took shape of a gas chamber with particulate matter PM10 and PM2.5 soaring to over eight times the safe limit. Cool breezy November mornings turned to hazy, gloomy and smoggy ones. PM10 levels were recorded at severe level of 831.6 and PM2.5 at 624.2. The World Health Organisation recommends that the PM2.5 is kept below 10 as an annual average. Exposure to average annual concentrations above 35 is associated wit...

Oh the dinosaurs aren't there anymore! Come on, everyone knows that. Maybe that is enough to show that a whole species can get erased off the face of our wild planet. The biodiversity is endangered and we humans are largely responsible for it. It is time to realise that all the species have an equal right to this planet in this largely democratic world. And we must not take this right from them because when the nature punishes, it can demolish anything in sight. I hope you guys remember the tiny brown sparrows springing all around the town, chirping sweetly, making our mornings prettier. Weren't they visible everywhere, in the parks, the balconies, gardens and what not. Where are they now ? The Passer Domesticus, commonly known as the house sparrow was included in the  IUCN Red List of Threatened Species  in 2002 following the sudden disappearance of these chirpy little creatures. We humans have shared our habitat with the house sparrows for thousands of years. Fou...