Our Real Problem...

“Nature doesn’t have a design problem. People do.”
(Quote from William McDonough and Michael Braungart)

You don’t need to be studying environmental science to have heard about global warming, pollution, or the fuel crisis. The environment is everything around us and its protection is something we hear about everyday. I have grown up conscious of saving electricity by switching off the lights and fans when I leave a room, reducing the amount of water I use, and recycling paper and plastic. Towards the end of high school however I had begun to wonder whether following the principle of “Reduce-Reuse-Recycle” was enough.

Recognising that environmental hazards are a pressing concern, most of us have the knee-jerk reaction of trying to curtail, or suppress the activities that lead to environmental damage. This approach at best only reduces pollution. While we are slowing down environmental degradation, we aren’t stopping it or repairing the damage already done. We are simply postponing the day we’ll have to deal with the real problem.

Given that the majority of environmental damage is caused by industrial activities, I believe the real problem is that environmentalists and industrialists are always in conflict. Environmentalists believe that industrialisation and economic development will only further deteriorate our already fragile environment. On the other hand, curbing industrialisation in an attempt to protect the environment is detrimental to economic growth! GreenFuel’s Emissions-to-Biofuels™ process brilliantly contradicts this typical viewpoint.

GreenFuel is a privately held, venture-backed firm that was started in 2001. They use sophisticated technology to profitably recycle CO2 from factory emissions by using photosynthetic algae. The process is fairly simple:
Factory emissions rich in Greenhouse Gases such as Carbon Dioxide and Nitrous Oxides, are fed through a “photo-bioreactor”. The process harnesses photosynthesis to grow algae in suspension, which captures the CO2 passed through the bioreactor. The algal cells obtain Nitrogen for nutrition from the Nitrous Oxides in the flue gas. In this way, huge amounts of CO2 and NOx are removed from exhaust before clean flue gases enter the atmosphere.

The bioreactor is designed to be retrofitted to flue stacks of fossil-fired power plants and other anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide with minimal impact to ongoing operations.

Using commercially available technology, the algae can then be economically converted to solid bio-mass fuel, methane or liquid transportation fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol.

It is the production of this biodiesel as by-product that makes this technology so brilliant. Biodiesel can itself be used as a source of energy. On burning, it produces more CO2, but only the amount it used in forming itself. This very CO2 fuels and restarts photosynthesis if passed through the bioreactor again. As a result, it is possible to get three or four times the energy for the same amount of CO2. The circular nature of this process makes it virtually self sufficient and highly efficient. Consequently, the waste of the power production process becomes valuable input for the production of biodiesel, all while removing a large majority of Greenhouse gases from in-place factory machinery!

The biofuel produced is also a source of extra profit. This allows a factory to recycle its CO2 emissions efficiently, and make money as that happens.

We live in a world that has become very environmentally sensitive. Being environmentally friendly in technology and policy is not only necessary, it has also become acknowledged as sensible to be so. This acknowledgement is manifested in proactive stances such as signing of the Kyoto Protocol internationally, and setting up of a functional ‘Ministry of Environment’ whose clearance is needed before any new industry is set up.

However, while we recognise the need for environmental protection, it is not motivation enough to make huge lifestyle changes. The fact that the GreenFuel process is financially viable in addition to being environmentally friendly, makes it that much more attractive.

I stumbled upon the patented GreenFuel process while working – with my 3 teammates – on our submission for The Global Challenge Award, 2007. Our project was to propose a possible solution to Global Warming and to develop a functional business plan to sell this solution in three countries. Developing a business plan involved in-depth market and industry analyses in each country, along with a study of political and financial feasibilities of the process, specific to each country.

My team’s project presented the GreenFuel technology and bioreactor as what we thought was today’s best solution to Global Warming. We thought that the way the technology worked was brilliant – so simply, efficiently, self-sufficiently and innovatively. We proposed a business plan that aimed at selling the bioreactor and its technology to thermal power plants in India, the United States, and China – three of the world’s biggest contributors to Greenhouse gas emissions.

Power plants typically have the required space for the bioreactor to be set up, and also are capable of putting in the large initial investment necessary to start the process. Financially, we found that investments would be made up in a matter of three years. This is why we thought it best to initially propose this technology to power plants before expanding to other sources of Greenhouse gas emission. Politically, all three countries are under Kyoto Protocol and are very committed to being environmentally friendly.

While developing the business plan, my teammates and I read a book called “Cradle to Cradle – Remaking the Way We Make Things” by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. This book suggests that the problem is not that our machinery pollutes too much…it is that it pollutes at all. The authors of the book say that the key to sustainable development is in innovation of design.

Human beings have always been about innovation. At the beginning, necessity was the mother of invention. We would invent and innovate to fulfil a need. Once a need is fulfilled, technology can be improved on, to make it more efficient, cheaper, or more sophisticated. What we need is to add ‘environmental concerns’ to the list of factors that call for innovation of design.

It is impossible and unrealistic to expect massive changes in lifestyle or short term sacrifices from individuals or industry for long term goals of environmental protection for the so-called greater good of the future. While it is difficult to change the opinions of each member of society one-by-one by talking about environmental protection, money is something everyone relates to. I strongly believe that the solution to environmental problems lies in creating new design; for technology as well as for management principles; that works with the system instead of against it; technology that can be simple, efficient and profitable while being environmentally friendly.

It has become my passion to spread awareness about this new management and production philosophy; by mentoring other students through The Global Challenge Award process, through my own projects and presentations, and through other activities I take part in.

To take just one example, I have recently joined a Plastic Waste Management Project through my college. A company in Bangalore, called K.K Plastics collects plastic waste and converts the waste to power. This powder is being used to lay roads in five cities in India. This process utilises wastes that would otherwise be clogging up our drains, contaminating our water and soil, or poisoning our wildlife. One cannot deny the huge number of people involved in the production and use of plastic. We would be endangering the livelihood of these people as well as the development of any industry that utilises plastic, by banning its use. K.K Plastics, on the other hand, is utilising this non-biodegradable pollutant to address the crying need for better roads in India. This approach to plastic waste management is so much better than expecting people to stop using plastic all together.

Here too, the brilliance of the process lies in its innovation.
I believe that more people need to promote this kind of philosophy; that redesigning technology and policies is the key to sustainable development and a cleaner tomorrow. Particularly so, students of Environmental Science, Engineering and Management. Environmental concerns needs to be a factor of production and design, not a deterrent to economic activity. We, like GreenFuel and K.K Plastics, need to find ways to work with environmentalists AND industrialists, perhaps taking our cue from nature. After all, like the authors of Cradle to Cradle say… “Nature doesn’t have a design problem. People do.”

The future is in our hands

The year is 2008. The millennium year went by nearly eight years ago. It was then, when prophecies about an apocalypse were forewarned by the likes of Notra Damus and the reverent Gurus from the Himalayas. Few religiously believed it would occur, while others laughed it off.

In the recent past, newspapers and TV news channels have been reporting life-threatening hurricanes and tsunamis, catastrophic wildfires, droughts and seismic repercussions all around the world. But man stood powerless, witnessing the mayhem around him.

What went wrong?

Before the time of Industrialisation, our predecessors were curious and questioned everything they saw and discovered. They ventured to every corner of the world in search of their answers. They looked up to the sky and tapped and every rock and pebble; Somewhere long they discovered fuel, minerals, metals, chemicals which could be altered and lots more. Eventually, we’ve “progressed” by using these products lavishly, making a luxurious possession, a basic necessity. The sources were, after all, more than just abundant!

What have we come to?

Come World War I and World War II, and man held the world in his palm. He decided what to do with the lives of people, animals and plants. He owned weapons, killed animals for hide, felled acres of trees to process furniture, paper and wood as fuel. Added to that list, he took the lives of his fellow beings; the Hiroshima-Nagasaki atomic bomb explosion for example, had annihilated most parts of that area and mutated those who were spared.

For several years, many countries rattled the Earth while waging wars. They left a colossal amount of damage to the economy and the environment.

Many countries managed to redeem their power in the economic arena, by enterprising industrial scaled projects and called themselves ‘developed countries’ while others ‘developing countries’ stood not far away. The increasing number of industries rose proportionately with product demand.

Industries laboriously worked in meeting the demand. Green lands turned grey as plant resources were uprooted, chimneys smoked thick soot and large amounts of untreated effluents were discharged into nearby water bodies. The quality of the environment deteriorated. Air became unbearable to breathe, the soil infertile and the water contaminated.

Birds and fish among all animals were chocked to death and were the first to be affected by pollutants. Animals lost their homes to anthropocentric activities and disappeared from the face of Earth. The world started to suffer a slow death.

What can we do?

Until recent times, the Earth beckoned for our help and we stayed oblivious to it. Most environmental hazards including hurricane, tsunami, temperature rise, ice melt down are due to direct or indirect cause of global warming.

Since we are responsible for the volatile change in the environment- specifically the ozone hole and climate change, it is our responsibility to set things right. It’s important to be a part of the solution, not the problem.

Awareness is half the cure. Al Gore, the former vice president of America used his power by spreading word about climate change through his award-winning documentary ‘The Inconvenient truth.’ His work has sent waves across the world, driving people to work towards a clean environment.

Keeping this perspective in mind, as a student of Environmental Science, I had the privilege to start a student-based organisation at college called ‘Green Shield.’ We work with NGOs and spread word about the environment among students.

In the past three months, we had a ‘No Plastic movement’ where we spoke to schools and few colleges. We invited a self support group called ‘the Belaku Trust’ that made recycled paper and cloth products, to sell at our college. As a part of our credit programme, we have tied up with a company called ‘KK plastics’. This company aims at using plastic to tar the roads. Not only are the roads durable, we seem to have found a solution to plastic wastes.

From college, we had visited the largest lake in Bangalore called the ‘Bellandur Lake’ and its’ village as a part of our community development programme. I had the opportunity to participate in a Lead analysis campaign, where we have tested positive for lead in the lake as well as in some ground water samples.

As a part of our climate change awareness program we assembled people to join the NGO, ‘Treesforfree’ in an afforestation movement called ‘Plantaton’.

Green Shield has moulded me in an adverse way and was a channel to prove my leadership qualities- responsibility, reliability and to motivate as well as bind my team, barring their differences, to ultimately harness their strongest skills. During tense situations, I had the capability to maintain my poise and socially, I was able to mingle with ease among the distinguished and the infamous of all ages alike.

As a student of environmental science, I am convinced that there is a critical need to not only to bring awareness to the public about the environmental issues, but to be able to bridge the gap between the long-thought rivals, the industrialists and the environmentalist. I believe that at a national and an international level, we can develop and grow economically as well as environmentally using clean technology, for a better tomorrow. As our Green Shield motto says, we should be “Guarding today, for tomorrow.”

Blue-less Earth

“Mom”, she called out from her room, “bring the mineral oil, quickly! I am getting late for school”. Tanya’s mother comes into the room with a small bottle and a piece of cloth. She then dabs the cloth with the oil and wipes her daughter’s hands, legs, face and baldhead.

According to our country’s former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, what has been described above is almost certainly going to be a daily ritual practiced by most people in their homes, say, fifty years from now. What else could one resort to, in the absence of our life sustaining resource…water?
This is how we kick started our first Environmental Science lecture in college - by coming to terms with the predictions made by one of our country’s best scientists. What it did, more than anything else, was to bring everything into perspective, show us exactly where we stand in time and how far we have come, in both a positive and negative light. It is indeed alarming and absurd to think of humankind reaching such dire circumstances where going bald and switching to mineral oil will be the only means of staying clean and hygienic. So, fifty years from now would mean that whatever Dr. Kalam claims might happen, and IS probably going to happen, if not in our lifetime, then definitely well within that of our children.

General statistics say that water covers 71% of the earth’s surface. To those who do not feel the need to study further into matters such as the subsequent division of that water, 71% seems like more than just sufficient. What they don’t realize is that of the 71%, up to 97% of the water is saline rendering it virtually unusable by man. The remaining is fresh water. Again, part of that water is locked in the ice caps, glaciers and hot springs, together constituting about 2.4%.

That leaves us, a population of almost 6.5 billion, dependent on just 0.6% of consumable water. This 0.6% is being used for varied purposes ranging from agriculture and hydroelectric power generation to cooking, drinking and bathing, by people all over the world.

In countries like the United Kingdom, the average person uses more than 50 litres of water a day flushing toilets. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 liters day. Statistics will also tell you that 85 per cent of urban India has access to safe, piped drinking water. However, statistics lie. Every person in cities today get by with about 71 litres per day, less than six flushes of an average toilet.
At this rate providing 145 litres of piped, treated water per day to the rest of urban India in the next three years will require an astronomical investment of about Rs 34,000 crore. Already states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are suffering due to shortage in the piped-water supply in many of its cities and towns.

It is indeed overwhelming to think of how pressed for resources we really are, and it is only going to get worse if we don’t wake up and take action soon.

The presence of water, like air, is always taken for granted, on the assumption that it will last forever. And Man is such that he is likely to do nothing about it until the very last moment, when he realizes that he is late for a meeting with an important client and has no water to wash the soap off his face. And once it is too late he will wake up, protest and demand answers as to why the government did not look into the matter sooner why nobody warned him. Each one begins to blame the person sitting next to him and starts trying to find excuses in defense. When all along, all he had to do was think wisely and use sensibly. With respect to our present day water crisis alone there are many choices that can be made to rectify our shortcomings.

Trapping rainwater and reusing it instead of letting it evaporate from our roads and terraces alone can solve some of our problems. Using buckets instead of hosepipes and showers on a day-to-day basis will also cut down the rate of consumption. This way more can be benefited. However, practically it will be of little use if only one person or one group of people puts these ideas into practice. This is where spreading of awareness comes into the picture.

The whole concept of sustenance needs to be taught or rather inculcated in the people right from childhood - ‘catch them young’ as they say. They need to learn to use and at the same time preserve for the generations after them. Many people take pride in knowing what the present situation on our planet is, in terms of how we are impacting the earth & nature. However just knowing isn’t enough, you need to take the next step and become accountable for what you do.

Dr Kalam had also said that if we continue to waste our water resources the way we presently are, by the year 2070, we would most likely be killing one another for a mere bottle of drinking water. Desalinating water will probably be one of the only jobs available. Children will start dying of mere desiccation of skin. All in all, life will become unimaginable.

Do we want that? Do we want our children to be born into a world where wanting to quench one’s thirst is like wishing that money grew on trees, something simply out of the question! No, we don’t. No one does. Hence, we must act before what we are left with is a lifeless, blue-less earth.