THE TERRAIN

 

Nature has to be nurtured. Is there anything on par with the beauty of nature? Enjoying right from every season’s gift – Spring’s hopeful bloom telling endless tales of a myriad of colours to the cool Winter’s blissful magic to Autumn’s fire - orange foliage and distant collective hues of the flora to the blend of Hot Asian climates and turning to exotic Summer cool spots of the East.

 

‘Environment day’ is observed for raising awareness of the observance of Earth Day to protect the environment.

 

From my childhood, I was interested in the word ‘Environment’ without knowing the real meaning of it. After I grew, I understood the real meaning of this word and BEFRIENDED the trees and  captured nature by taking photographs and till now make it a point to  travel in search of the green pastures more and more.

 

Celebrated poet Khalil Gibran beautifully quotes: “Forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair”.

 

One prominent person who was visually and hearing challenged Enthusiast Helen Keller, enjoys by saying, “To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug”.

 

Every year, worldwide 5th of June is celebrated as Environment Day encouraging awareness and action for the protection of the Environment. The prime goal of the United Nations Organizations is to keep the environment clean, pollution – free and to address environmental issues like pollution, over population, global warming, wildlife depletion and crime related to it.

 

The main objective of UN for protecting the environment is to reduce CO2 and methane emissions which are the second most dangerous gases resulting due to green house gas effect.

 

As an initiative, at St. Britto’s, various activities were conducted like ‘Pledging and taking eco-friendly steps in one’s locality’, community clean-up campaign. Brainstorming session with ‘Go Green’ concept, puppet shows and Composting workshops were conducted to raise awareness on keeping the environment clean and safe.

The students were able to learn and understand the need for keeping our environment safe and clean. They were capable of handling the issues related to environment clean-up, turning to eco-friendly products like using paper, jute etc., During the Art and Craft classes, re-using old newspapers and clothes to create artifacts and handicrafts were also taught to the students. 

On the other side, students learnt that considerable portion of peels and removed portion of damaged vegetables and fruits can be used for making composts and converted to small-scale natural manure, reducing the number of unwanted items going to the trash.

 

As a native American proverb goes, “We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”.

 

Our Woman scientist Marie Curie, who discovered Radium, has reminisced “All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child”.

 

Evil Effects of Environmental Pollution

Another biggest negative catalyst speeding up environmental degradation is the ‘Carbon footprint’ which is the total amount of excess greenhouse gases that are caused due to our actions like,Transportation, burning of fossil fuels used in cars, ships, planes, Global Warming, Climate Change, Melting of polar ice-caps causing a rise in sea levels, turning oceans acidic with devastating effects.

 

Environmental pollution occurs by evolving over a period of time as nature is unable to absorb and neutralize toxic byproducts of all human activities resulting in poisonous gas emissions.

 

The broad classification of environmental pollution includes Air, Water, Land and Soil pollution.

 

Air Pollution

The quality of air which when gets badly affected by solid particles and gases, makes it impure for breathing causing polluted air due to chemical substances used in various industrial sectors being the major player followed by radio-active emissions in nuclear fusion and fission activities, dust, pollen, mould, spores etc., constitute air pollution.
In urban areas, ozone gas formed as smog is one of the pollutants along with sulphur-di-oxide, nitrogen-di-oxide, carbon-monoxide, volatile organic compounds and other air-borne particles.

 

Water Pollution

Water contamination is due to pollutants like wastes from various industries, organic volatile substances, heavy metals, unwanted left-over from food production, animal wastes etc., that mixes in water bodies like oceans, seas, rivers, streams, aquifers there by degrading its quality and making water unfit for drinking and other purposes to humans and the entire ecosystem.  

Illegal dumping of garbage and chemicals in urban areas by industries, health care centers and individuals leading to increased water pollution leading to the death of marine life, disrupting the food chain, and in drinking water supplies, fertilizer contamination causing toxic ‘algae blooms’ destroying fish and other aquatic animals are some of the harmful effects of environmental pollution.

 

Land and Soil Pollution

Fossil fuels have dominated the area of all purpose fuels as it can be used in vehicles, power generation industries, industrial chemicals like all kinds of plastics, solvents, detergents, asphalt, lubricating oils etc., thus polluting the land and soil. Put together, all these kinds of pollution affect the health of human beings, animals, plants and the entire planet.

 

At St.Britto’s, the students were encouraged to give their views in the ‘brainstorming session’ and they took vows to protect the environment in the best manner. An ‘Eco-run’ was performed at the school premises where the students passed on the placards and charts bearing headings and one-liners to the fellow students who stood at vantage points, that emphasized the importance of saving and protecting the environment in the best manner known to all of us.

 

Sea grass meadows

One recent and interesting discovery, to help the marine habitat to sustain life in the oceans has been the sea grass meadows.  These marine plants were originally sea beds, efficient in capturing carbon being the top-most in protecting the environment. Scientist Max Planck, from the Institute for Marine Microbiology found in his studies that there were mountains of sugar content below sea grass meadows found in ocean beds. Nearly, one square kilometer of sea grass present in the form of Sucrose - C12H22O11 stores twice the amount of carbon found in the land region.

 

This is indeed a new discovery, but unfortunately, water pollution has threatened the existence of sea grass in the ocean. The sea grass content has been declining in the oceans, due to the damage caused by coastal development, degraded water quality etc.,. The findings of Mr. Liebke, has shed some light on the knowledge of sea grass that the sucrose content was the main reason for the large amounts of stored carbon.

 

The sea grass absorbs the carbon content from its surroundings in the marine region and stores it as ‘Blue Carbon’. It protects the coastal lines by absorbing wave energy, producing oxygen, cleaning the oceans by soaking up the polluting nutrients produced by the human.

The UNEP – World Conservation and monitoring Centre and International sea grass experts network have been launched in United States and Sweden, for scaling up and restoration of sea grass which is to be followed soon in other countries. It was calculated that if the sucrose content in sea grass rhizosphere was degraded by microbes, 1.54 million tons of CO2 was emitted in the atmosphere which was roughly the amount released by 3,30,00 car emission in a year. The sea grass meadows were productive and dynamic habitats for marine animals and a feeding place for prawns and juvenile fish.

 

Wash out Tobacco

It is a well-known fact that tobacco has hazardous effect on the mankind and damages the ecosystem along with the reducing climate resilience. The main reason is that tobacco cultivation not only needed large amount of water for growing and also has led to chopping of nearly 600 million trees of other kinds which were protecting the environment. The cigarette butts made of plastic leads to plastic waste, a non-biodegradable one, which destroys the environment. As an alternate to combustible smoking, though E-cigars were brought in, it only rendered itself non-biodegradable and all devices associated with it like discarded cartridges, other disposable wastes which were originally micro plastics only polluted the water ways.

 

In our School, the students were introduced to awareness programme on ‘Saving and nurturing the environment’ on ‘World Environment Day’ celebrated every year. Many other activities like a rally in the school campus and the nearby areas were conducted and the students demonstrated the ill-effects of tobacco using placards and face paintings.

 

Environmental Awareness

Environmental awareness and consciousness helps us to restore damages caused due to environmental pollution.

“To leave the world better than you found it, sometimes you have to pick up other people’s trash” .                                                             - Bill Nye

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better ”.                                                                              - Albert Einstein

 

At St. Britto’s, a power point was presented to the students from Classes VI - XII about the basics of protecting the environment that starts with the usual ritual of Reuse, Recycle, Compost, Green fuel, Taking Public transport system instead of Private ones, using our own water bottles and not buying new ones, switching over to washable and reusable diapers in children, recyclable bags instead of plastic carry bags etc., Seminars, PowerPoint presentations, Essay-writing and Oratorical competitions, projects and exhibitions were conducted for three days, to inculcate the knowledge of taking necessary steps in protecting and maintaining the environment.

Environmental Ethics

It is a discipline in philosophy which deals with the study of the moral relationship of human beings and environment which made its move as a ‘Shallow ecology movement’ by Naess in 1973, which calls it as a fight against pollution and resource depletion. 

 

The students of St. Britto’s actively participated in a joint city-wide drive with six colleges in commemoration of 48th World Environment Day which was conducted with the concept of ‘Dry Waste Collection’ and drop off points were allotted for collection of footwear, cushion, mattress, pillow cloth, electric and electronic gadgets etc.,

 

“All we have to do is wake up and change”                         -Greta Thunberg

 

“We won’t have a society if we destroy the environment.

Environment is no one’s property to destroy; it’s everyone’s 

responsibility to protect ”                                             - Mohit Agadi                                                                                                               

The students also actively participated in the ’Befriend the trees’ drive where they had an opportunity to ‘Bond, Collaborate and Conjoin’ with ‘Thrift Shops’ to raise awareness on environmental pollution. The students joined hands with their families, friends and relatives with the responsibility of disposal of waste in the form of reselling the unused and rarely used clothes of all types to the ‘thrift Shops’ i.e. second-hand shops. 

 

This initiative was started and still now continued in some Metropolitan cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Kerala, etc.,

 

The students also collected torn, unusable clothes and turned them into eco-friendly foot rugs, mops and unused diapers and sanitary pads and refurbished clothes were sent to old age homes and orphanages.

Phenology, the study of cyclic and natural phenomena in relation to climate, plant and animal life was pondered over with zeal and enthusiasm by the students of St. Britto’s as they were shown “video clippings as part of an environmental awareness drive”, where they watched the emergence of leaves and flowers, the first appearance of migratory birds, the first flight of butterflies, the date of leaf colouring and fall in deciduous trees, the time of egg-laying of birds and amphibians and the timing of the developmental cycles of temperate honey-bee colonies.  

Season Watch

At St. Britto’s, the students were introduced to an awareness programme “Season Watch” developed by our community’s noted naturalist - “Tree Reagen” and people who enrolled in it by studying the impact of change of Season on trees and plants by monitoring them in their territory.

 

Staccato Instructions for season watch 

The students were given instructions like observe, register and upload by adding a tree from the neighborhood or surroundings. Observe every week. Uploading your findings in the website.

 

“Capture the Nature in a journal”, an activity was held at St.Britto’s, where the students as participants were able to renew their interests in nature and the idea of conservation. The students were encouraged to pause, observe, appreciate and record nature in a creative manner. 

 

An online competition where the students were encouraged to take photographs of themselves with their creations using natural things like natural or dried flowers, leaves, stems or seeds in an inspiring natural background along with a short write-up through Whats App or Instagram.

 

The Future plans for a safe Environment

Many factors underlie the causes for environmental pollution and it is the duty of every individual to keep ourselves and the ecosystem safe by following the three ‘‘R’s” and consuming less, making composts, using less water, buying from local people, conserving electricity and following lifestyle changes that promises a safe environment for the citizens of future.

 

So, I have made every student in my institution to realise and go with environmental ethics, and feel that it is happening among them and followed in their walks of life. When the students reach me with the benefits incurred and want to take it to the next generation,  I welcome them and encourage to continue.

Testimonial

 

I am, Roshini doing B.com in The New College - Royapettah, a passed out student in the year 2018-2021. During my journey as a school student in VI std, I was the President of the Eco-Club and I monitored the saplings, plants with utmost care which, paved way for me to develop the same interest in the college too. So, the school programme and my involvement in these activities to carry on without any break helped me to start the Eco-Club along with my friends by doing the following:

Educating the public by giving hand outs and rally campaign to reduce Carbon-di -oxide emission (Less usage of two and four wheelers, commuting by public transport system and bi-cycles) by “Kick Carbon-di-oxide habitat” event and placing hoardings in appropriate places. We also conducted “Eco-run” for Students and Staffs and urged the importance of Go Green around us. Through our group, we visited the neighbourhood and elaborated the residents on  composting the household waste. We also shared our views, reports and  suggestions in the local newspaper.