World Environment Day today!

 

Today is World Environment Day!

It is our primary and foremost responsibility to make sustainable environment conservation activities for a greener and cleaner world into our day to day lives and also important to focus special drive on this mission with various networking efforts!

The efforts on tree planting, avoiding plastics, minimize the usage of motor vehicles can be done urgently at our individual level. 

World Cycle Day is being observed June 3 every year globally! The usage of cycles are immensely helpful for our physical well being and it helps to reduce the emission of CO2 into our atmosphere by not having used the fuel based motor vehicles. 

While WORD is also doing various special programs for the environment protection activities, we also embed the theme and focus on environment conservation in every programs that we implement. We would like to point out two major programs in this perspective. 

Promotion of Menstrual Health Hygiene for Women:

Considering the importance of menstrual health hygiene for women especially from their adolescent stage, WORD implements this program. Under this program, we also promote the reusable sanitary napkins which are being stitched in our center through the trained women and being distributed since March 2018.  We have initiated this project to mark the World Women's Day 2018. We sincerely thanks to Fullerton India Credit Company Limited for their support to design the project and for all the capital support and the initial running costs for the stitching centers by rural women. Our thanks are also due to the technical support from Real Relief- India to help us in setting the stitching center and all the capacity building towards this. 

The usage of reusable sanitary napkin is also helping to the environment as this being made with the clothe with antimicrobial treatment.  With simple wash and natural drying, it can be used for at least 12 months. Even though it is made with fewer amount of nano plastics, unlike the chemical based sanitary napkins, the disposal is very simple and it is harmless. This is just like putting our clothes in the dustbin which would be decomposed besides various health benefits for the women. 

Microscale CDM Biogas Program

WORD in Namakkal District implement the microscale domestic biogas CDM program under the Clean Development Mechanism of the UNFCCC with the support of Fair Climate Network. Under this program, WORD constructed and maintains 300 biogas units as of now. 

The purpose of the project activity is to set up 5,000 biogas plants (digesters) of 2m³ capacity each for single households in Namakkal district where the NGO is working, and in this way replace Non-Renewable Biomass with biogas for cooking and heating water. The project will also reduce methane emissions from cattle manure and will contribute strongly to sustainable development of the rural households involved in the project. A biogas plant of 2 m³ capacity is sufficient to provide cooking fuel to a family of four to five. Namakkal is a biomass deficit region. Fuel wood scarcity has an impact directly on rural households, which are highly dependent on this fuel. Demand for fuel wood and logs from commons and forests have caused resource degradation to the extent that collection exceeds sustainable yield. Forest degradation on the other hand leads to fuel wood scarcity leading to unsustainable removal of biomass to meet the demands. The project activity will attenuate the need for rural energy for cooking and water heating.

Each household will install a 2 m³ biogas plant and feed cow dung into the anaerobic digester. The technology is tried and tested in India and has been in use for many years. By utilizing these various sources of biogenic waste in a controlled anaerobic digestion and combustion system, biogas will be available for cooking energy and heating water. Biogas will be used on a two-ring gas stove which is being used for the biogas project activity. 

There are various social, environmental, economic and technological benefits through this project which contribute to sustainable development. Few of them are: 

Social benefits

• Reduces drudgery to women and children who spend long hours and travel long distances to collect fuel wood.
• Reduces indoor air pollution, thus eliminating health hazards for women and children.
• The project provides security of energy supply
• It leads to better manure management thus keeping the surroundings clean and reduce some of the disease causing pathogens
• Reduces the time of cooking and it can be used in better & productive way.

Environmental benefits:

• Improves the local environment by reducing uncontrolled deforestation in the project area.
• Avoids local environmental pollution through better waste management.
• Will lead to soil improvement by providing high quality manure.
• Avoided global and local environmental pollution and environmental degradation by switching from non-renewable biomass to renewable energy, leading to reduction of Green House Gases emissions.
• Reduces deforestation, reduces indoor air pollution, and increases use of manure rather than chemical fertilizers.

Economic benefits:

• Higher productivity of family members as they  have adequate cooking fuel supply
• Will provide employment to local communities through construction and maintenance of biogas units.
• The project will reduce cooking time, thus providing women to take up income generating activities

Technological benefits

• Better technology for cooking compared to currently used traditional mud/clay/3-stone stoves.
• Better biogas digester models.
• Training of local masons for construction of biogas units for the project activity.
• Demonstrations and training programs will be carried out for the masons and end users on maintenance and other related aspects of biogas units.

At this World Environment Day, let's quickly get into concrete actions for a greener world together!