Doing the green thing

(bdnews24.com, December 4, 2010)

An international publishing house has me on its mailing list and I get emails from there on a regular basis, as do a lot of other journalists I know. I also get print outs in the mail, replicating what the emails say. While I once took that for granted, since the snail-mail acted as a kind of mnemonic through an incredibly chaotic week, it now seems wasteful and redundant. I have told the various people at the publishing house this and asked them to send me only the email, save a tree and build on their carbon credits, but they do not react or respond. Maybe this is a case of a tree falling in the deepest part of the forest.

Environmental awareness is taking on new avatars every day. It can be visualised as a social movement or a very personal form of activism that speaks passionately and persistently of the need for various measures to protect natural resources and ecosystems. Sustainable management through public policy, lobbying, protests and the setting of examples could be the route to a better world, a healthier planet, a safer future. That awareness has indeed grown, spread and become part of the everyday ethos for many all over the world. The effects of ignoring or abusing Earth are becoming more pronounced by the hour, and the consciousness that it is man who is destroying his own home is increasing. There have been books written on the subject, films made, papers presented at international conferences and laws changed to deal with the issue, but how much do each one of us, at a very personal level, actually do? Have we changed our own lifestyles to make sure that there is a world for our descendants to live in, long after we ourselves have crumbled to dust? Think about it.

Many of the problems we face today are not of our making, admittedly. Blame it on the quest for “progress” as it was called, that began a very long time ago, perhaps when man first stood on two feet and found that fire was a useful tool. In more contemporary history, the Industrial Revolution in Europe set the tone for modern-day engineering, technology and manufacturing units. The euphoria of doing things faster, bigger, better and more easily did much to deplete the planet of precious resources like fossil fuels and minerals. And we – as a species – did not really know better when we dug up the earth and poured chemicals into rivers and puffed carcinogen-laden smoke into the air. In the mid-1970, people began to see what was going on, how “progress” was making sure that there may not be a life worth living not too far down the line. And a slow, wary and oft-reviled awareness started growing. We, the people of today’s world, realise that what we inherited is not healthy, for our bodies as much as for our planet. And we have started working on dealing with that particular issue. In fact, the Chipko movement of the 1970s holds as much credence – if not more – now than it did then, with its slogan of “ecology is permanent economy”, which is easily adapted to the new brand of environmentalism, which deals with aspects like global warming and genetic engineering as comprehensively as it does with the traditional issues of priority, protection and preservation.

Or have we? Just as I get printouts of already-sent emails, there is a paper trail that leads inexorably from company to client, no matter whether it is necessary or not. Any shareholder will be familiar with company reports and newsletters dropping through the letters slot in the front door or being received from the courier man. New stores, services and sales will be announced by inserts in the daily newspapers, sometimes blank on one side and shoved in by the dozen. Team discussions in the office invariably have executives – and, as major offenders, journalists – taking notes on paper, sometimes just a large box outlined on a larger sheet or one word scribbled in a corner, the whole crumpled and thrown into the basket.

And it is not just about saving trees by saving paper. A train ride or a drive through almost any big city in India and many anywhere else in the world is an environmentalist’s nightmare. Peek out the window and there will be plastic bags, scrap paper, cans, PVC bottles and other rubbish tossed casually out on to the tracks, the road, the nearby streams, the sea. Rituals in India, for instance, result in a good deal of waste in the form of flowers, bricks, wood, et al, all mandatorily dumped into flowing water. But does it all have to be contained in a plastic bag, of the kind that does not have a biodegradable-by date attached?

Our planet does come with that date – and time, it is a-wasting!