GO GREEN -- The new age mantra

Sometimes I visualize myself in a lush emerald green grassy meadow sprinkled with beautiful and colorful flowers, skirted by hills on the farthest end, a sun shimmering deep blue brook flowing by, listening to the sound of the bells of the cattle grazing by and inhaling fresh unpolluted oxygen. Hmmm , visualizing the place itself is so thereaupetic.

Cut to reality, though I live away from the humdrum of the city traffic, there are many high rise construction around my housing society and many new constructions coming up all around. The frequent construction activity sounds, sand, cement debris flying, blasting of huge boulders, car sounds of nearly 700 cars whizzing by all add to the noise and air pollution.

Now this air pollution in Hyderabad city is said to be triggering sinusitis amongst the Hyderabad population. I too am a vicitim of this situation. Of late I have been getting weird pressurizing pains in my ears ,nose , eyes and all round my head. On my visit to the doctor it was confirmed as sinusitis – a gift from present day environment to mankind.

With many ailments striking us , People are growing increasingly aware of the need to protect and save our environment. Go Green is the new age mantra. Every individual aware of the environmental change should take steps to conserve our surroundings.

Our housing society also sparked off a 'save our environment' thought process. ITC limited used our Republic day celebrations as an ideal platform to kick start their program in our society. They have handed over a recycled sack to every resident. All plastic covers of chocolates, wafers like kurkure covers, card board cartons of spices, toothpaste, metal pieces, unwanted paper waste make way into this sack. Every fortnight they come and collect these sacks. To encourage participation they also pay Rs2/kg of waste. 60 kgs of such waste is supposed to save a tree. These wastes are recycled at their plant. An excellent thought well taken by our society and especially these messages reach children very fast. My 11 year old son makes it a point to take the tiniest bit of paper to this sack. Each fortnight when a truck load of waste goes from our campus, I heave a sigh of relief and a small satisfied smile that we too are able to contribute towards saving our earth in our own small way. If the organisations and NGO's tied with many residential and commercial complex it would make a huge difference to our planet.

Other than these I also take my own sack bag to get vegetables, I avoid buying plastics , use eco-friendly products like CFL’s at home for lighting.

Hope our government and environmental agencies also enforce strict rules and ban plastics and encourage eco-friendly products by not levying taxes on them , make them affordable to common man.

Almost each family has 3 cars today one each for husband,wife and child to be driven around by the driver. Government should take measure to curb the traffic and pollution by regulating the registration of on road vehicles.

Let's Go green and save our blue planet.