Green Somethings: The Blog

Declare India as America's Green Idea Lab Partner

 Ideas for Change in America is a citizen-driven project that aims to identify and create momentum around the best ideas for how the Obama Administration and 111th Congress can turn the broad call for "change" across the country into specific policies around several social causes.

I seek your support to push an idea suggested by a fellow citizen, India as a green idea lab partner that will establish a platform to share alternate technology solutions to combat global warming.

ALL YOU NEED TO DO is to vote here. The idea's already garnered above 20 votes and few more votes will make this idea gravitate towards the second round. The top 10 rated ideas will be presented to the Obama Administration on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009 as the "Top 10 Ideas for America." A national campaign will be launched for each idea and mobilize the collective energy of the millions of members of Change.org, MySpace, and partner organizations to ensure that each winning idea gets the full consideration of the Obama Administration and Members of Congress.

Let's be Strong

My sincere condolences to all those who lost loved ones in the terror attacks that have been on since last night in the city of Mumbai.

Let's all be strong and pray that these horrifying incidents get over very soon.

As citizens of this great city and country, lets ensure we are not bogged down by these barbaric attacks.

Live Earth India - Mumbai, Dec 7th 2008

What are the Bachchans doing on December 7th?

And what has that got to do with what famous playback singers Shaan, Sonu Nigam, the mesmerizing trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, the enchanting Anoushka Shankar or for that matter Bollywood stars like Preity Zinta, Hrithik Roshan, Bipasha Basu, Farhan Akhtar, Arjun Rampal are doing on the same day?

They are all here, in aamchi Mumbai, lining up to present a musical extravaganza with an eclectic mix of Indian and Western musical genres along with stars like Bon Jovi and Roger Waters at the Live Earth India concert.

The Live Earth Concerts were held first as a series on 07.07.07 in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg and Hamburg which saw a participation count of close to 2 billion people across 11 cities. The Indian sequel is being co-produced by Control Room, the global producer of the Live Earth concerts and Mumbai based event management company Wizcraft Entertainment.

Co-founded by Emmy award winner producer Kevin Wall with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Live Earth was built upon the belief that entertainment has the power to transcend social and cultural barriers to move the world community to action. A for-profit company, Live Earth seeks to leverage the power of entertainment through integrated events, media, and the live experience to ignite a global movement aimed at solving the most critical environmental issues of our time.

Key Indian partners of the Live Earth India event include TERI (The Energy & Resources Institute), Climate Project India, India Youth Climate Network, Sierra Club India, Art of Living, Isha Foundation and Big FM. To learn about other partners please click here

As we see India becoming a forerunner in the fight for climate control, watch Indian and global environmentalists, policy makers, cultural heroes and citizens come together to celebrate this momentous event in the quest for building a greener world. 

The Live Earth India concert takes place on 07.12.08 at Andheri Sports Complex, Mumbai. Tickets are available online

More details about Live Earth and previous concerts available at http://LiveEarth.org

Bamboozled with Bamboo

I recently learnt about a Hydrabad based social enterprise, Bamboo House India (BHI). Looking at the range of products and eco-solutions that this enterprise has come to offer in only one year of its existence, sure did bamboozle me!

BHI promotes the use of bamboo as an economic driver for rural and tribal artisans. It is involved in the production of bamboo products, handcrafted by rural artisans and enabling linkages with several market channels for the sale of bamboo products thereby generating 'green livelihood' opportunities for these rural and tribal craftsmen.

Triple bottom line

From being involved in the bamboo plantations, training the craftsmen to marketing of finished products BHI leaves no stone unturned in ensuring excellent product quality and aesthetics. Set up by Aruna and Prashant Lingam in 2007, BHI is working to create a chain of bamboo retail outlets across the country (and in due time internationally as well) which will house all sorts of bamboo products like home decor, accessories, cutlery, frames & stands and furniture under one roof.

Their sustainable business model they say, will help the rural and tribal artisans and use bamboo to develop
contemporary life style products to suit market tastes and demand rather than age old basketry items and play an active role in promoting bamboo an eco-friendly substitute to other raw materials.

BHI is also providing bamboo solutions for low cost housing structres especially across rural India. To ensure continuous demand, they are tying up with government agencies to build resorts and bus shelters. The tie ups include National Mission on Bamboo Applications (NMBA), Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT-D), Confederation of Indian Indsutry (CII), Cane & Bamboo Technology Center (CBTC), Andhra Pradesh Forest Dept (APFD), Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services (IL &FS), Tripura Bamboo Mission (TBM) and A P Technology Promotion & Development Center (APTDC).

View all BHI products at http://greenlivelihoods.org/

Blog Insta' Chat with Google Chatback Badge

I just added the Google Talk gadget to my blog (see on the left hand corner) and I must say it's lovely. It's been not more than 10 minutes and I already got people pinging me and wanting to share more about my blog. It's a cool way to encourage comments' sharing - I find in most cases, blog visitors are lazy to comment about the posts. This gadget may just be the way to get instant feedback - I have, in less than 10 min. of it's installation; try it out here