Vitamin Green

TetraPaks are very common in our home nowadays, and its good to see that someones recycling them for useful applications – notebooks, diaries, napkins, toilet rolls, pens and even roofing. This IS in India

Make tote bags from old tank tops?

Another gem of an idea from CraftyNest with a really great tutorial on how to do it the right way.

Note: Make sure you are using the right kind of top and decide the size based on your ’strap strength’ (see the instructions).

We can’t wait to get started!

Chemicals are an important part of technology that has added great convenience to our lives over the last half-century.

But we’re now finding out that many of the things we are using everyday, contain chemicals that have major long term health consequences…not a pretty picture

Read more here — Non-Stick and Stain-Free: The Soiled, Messy Truth

via Greenr

Megaprojects are the toast of this decade in India.

With financing becoming easier to obtain, and the government looking to push development (or is it industrialisation?) in a major way government and business are thinking big.

While conventional wisdom seems to suggest that economies of scale make this the only way to go, why do so many mega projects seem to fail (overruns in cost, time to completion or outright cancellation)?

Answer? The risks are often misrepresented or miscalculated…

MUST READ: Megaprojects and Risk (Book Excerpt)

Some interesting reading about these issues (and examples)…

25 power projects fail to materialise in Karnataka (via Rediff)

Consequences of Mega Projects (via JSTOR)

The real story of Dabhol (via Outlook)

Why mega-projects are falling apart (via Crainsnewyork)

Mega-projects: the changing politics of urban public investment (Book)

Bandra-Worli Sea Link: cost rose 6-fold to Rs1,600 crore new (via domain-b.com)

SEZs: Bumpy road to economic prosperity? (via The Hindu Business Line)

You can now get the complete digital collection of National Geographic (everything that they’ve ever published over 120 years), on one hard disk drive.

“…definitive collection of every issue of National Geographic magazine, digitally reproduced in stunning high resolution, brings you the world and all that is in it..”

Get it at National Geographic Online

Only available in the US, so get in touch with your friends

Here’s a blog that features some of the most interesting videos about our environment (both the lighter and more serious side), from all over the internet. Makes for lots of very engaging viewing and proves definitively that a video says more than a thousand words…

Check out Eco Entertainment

Many green resolutions favour style over substance. Here are some really good ones, that put substance first.

15 Resolutions for the Environment That Actually Make a Difference
via The Daily Green
NOTE: Many (not all) of these are very relevant in the Indian context

Businesses and the government may not yet be true believers, but clearly many individuals in India are ‘getting it’.

Protecting the environment isn’t a cost, but a saving…

Check out these Super Savers
(via India Today)

We love practical and achievable goals for the environment…and this idea — a phone line for recycing all kinds of waste seems like one that could work really well for a city like Panjim (or Madgaon, or Vasco, or Mapusa…)

See how it works in NY through the Call2Recycle program.

As we’ve said before, nothing works like convenience…

A late update on a very interesting event we were at last month.

Daily Dump, evangelists of composting at home (and designers of these beautiful home composters), came to Goa in November 2009 for its first Annual Clone Meet…

Here’s a summary of what happened….
(via Daily Dump)