Vitamin Green

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)

Still confused about whether CFLs (because of mercury) are safer or better than incandescent lightbulbs for our environment?

Here’s a primer (PDF) that makes a lot of sense of the issue.

via NDRC

We think recycling plastic waste usefully is an impressive achievement, because thats the one kind we’re often at a loss to reuse. Which is why we find a couple of companies based in Delhi really interesting…

Conserve and Thunk seem to have figured how to convert plastic bags, waste cloth and other waste into really attractive ‘upcycled’ products like bags, wallets, footwear, stationery and home decor items. They make great alternatives for leather (and other materials) we are using today and as gifts too…

We’ve been advocates of using more eco-friendly and healthy alternatives in our homes. But how healthy are our homes themselves?

A recent scientific study conducted by the Center for Science and Environment (CSE) found that over 72% of paints in the Indian market to have dangerous levels of lead in them. Why’s this a problem? Because they are slowly releasing the lead into our home environments and this is known to have a negative impact on growing children.

Unfortunately, there are no standards that the industry is obliged to comply with except the voluntary limits prescribed by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

The study (published in August 2009) says that different colours and brands have different levels of lead. The highest lead content was in the deep orange paint of the Shalimar’s Superlac brand – 185 times the BIS limit and 308 times the US paints limit of 600 ppm. Berger brand Luxol’s golden yellow color had a staggering 162,559 ppm lead – 163 times the BIS limit and 271 times the US paints limit.

So which brand is healthiest? All samples of ICI-Dulux had lead much below the specified limit. In fact, of the five paints manufacturers, only ICI didn’t use lead in its paint formulations. The white shades of Asian Paints and Nerolac also conformed to the standards.

For the Down to Earth article read here:
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/full6.asp?foldername=20090831&filename=news&sid=14&page=1&sec_id=9

For a summary of the Study read here :
http://www.cseindia.org/aboutus/press_releases/press-index.htm

For the full Laboratory Study read here:
http://cseindia.org/lead_paints.pdf

We’d like to build a house of our own someday, and we hope to have one that’s very low on resource consumption – both when its made and later.
Mud-brick homes seem like a very interesting option, especially since we have a friend whose home in Bangalore uses them. It was built by architect Chitra Vishwanath and we love the idea of using old technology (much evolved) today.

But earth architecture isn’t just making inroads in India. It’s a global phenomenon – and you can track it here…

We’ve often heard that certain things we have around the house can be really useful for other tasks. The problem is that we never know what exactly can be used for what.

Which is why we love www.altuse.com, a site that is a database of alternative applications of ‘everyday products’.

For example, did you know that you can use lemons to…

1. eliminate bad breath…
2. freshen up the Kitchen…
3. keep egg shells from cracking…
4. remove odors on hands…
5. remove stains..

and much more…

From AltUse

Innovative use of natural materials is a big part of the drive to create more sustainable products.

The high growth-rate of bamboo has made it a material of choice to replace hardwood. But the unique properties of this material, whose tensile strength rivals that of steel, make it an incredibly versatile material.

See this bamboo bike (its actually available for sale), which is something we’d love to buy in here India.

And if you feel brave enough, here is a detailed guide to building one yourself

From BBC

Seeing as most of us spend way more time in front of a laptop than necessary, a laptop stand can be really important. Why go looking for one…make one yourself from spare cardboard.

Here are some detailed instructions.

From GreenUpgrader

Intelligent alternatives to ‘high-consumption’ items are really exciting – because they let us bring about significant changes (and improvements) in our consumption behaviour.Every little drop counts

Check out Dittohangers who replace plastic and wire hangers with several innovative 100% recyclable hangers – using recycled PET bottles, recycled paper and so on…