SHILLONG: On the occasion of World Environment Day observed on Wednesday, two IIM Shillong students who are part of ECoBiz club in the institute shared their views with The Shillong Times on matters related to environment protection.
Ernesto Dhileeban K – World Environment Day is celebrated every year to raise global awareness of the need to take positive environmental action.The theme for this year’s World Environment Day celebrations is Think.Eat.Save.
Think.Eat.Save is an anti-food waste and food loss campaign that encourages us to reduce our food wastage. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), every year 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted which is equivalent to the total food production in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.
At the same time, nearly 350 million people in India go to bed, hungry every day. When so many people suffer without food, about one third of our global food production is either wasted or lost.
The sad part is in future, our vegetarians may be pushed to eat insects as FAO has suggested edible insects as the future prospects of food and feed security.
In addition to this, Food wastage is an enormous drain on natural resources and it contributes a negative impact to the environment.In fact, the global food production occupies 25% of all habitable land and is responsible for 70% of fresh water consumption, 80% of deforestation, and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.
It is the largest single driver of biodiversity loss and land-use change.
So on this World Environment Day, we as responsible human beings,should take action from our home to reduce food waste and minimise the environmental impact of food production and force food production processes to become more efficient.
So think before you eat and help save our environment!
Rutwik Dilip Phatak – ECoBiZ Club of IIM Shillong has a busy year planned ahead. To start with, taking forward the monthly awareness campaign – Chetna, we have chosen “Think.Eat.Save” as the theme for the poster for June month as a tribute to World Environment Day.
Under the title of Chetna we will continue spreading awareness about different social issues throughout the year with the help of monthly posters and e-posters.
The project with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan will commence this June. Next, we are all set for our plastic-free campus initiative. As a first step towards making the campus plastic-free we would promote and provide cloth bags to substitute polythene carry bags. Next, we have planned an annual inter-college event spanning over more than 30 days.
As we come towards the end of 2013 we will organize the 4th Annual Blood Donation Camp at IIM Shillong and will try to break our previous record in Shillong. EcoWeek, a week-long intra-college event is to follow after that.
Apart from these activities we would also take up several live projects in and around Shillong.
We are also in touch with Akshay Patra, a free mid-day meal program for school-going children, by ISKCON for widening their scope of activities in the North East.
Through several guest-lectures we will ensure a healthy interaction with social entrepreneurs, green-businessmen and other achievers.
Last but not the least; we will also continue our largely successful Prayaas program for educating the staff at IIM Shillong.
Currently we are working on strengthening our web-presence through our facebook page.
We will also be launching a website soon.