Environment Protection -Conservation & Awareness

Every single individual might be aware of the term environment and protection of the environment through the subject Environmental Education. But, only few of them would have realized its depth and the necessity of environment protection. With development happening all around the world, the environment is enduring every consequence. Human impact such as overpopulation, pollution, burning fossil fuels, and deforestation have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, etc.  It’s time to take environmental protection as a serious matter if we aspire towards having a blissful and healthy life ahead.

Environment protection is an everyday task. Every single contribution towards the environment can bring about a significant change. Our NGO Good Living Trust planned to inculcate the idea of cleaning and protecting the environment from the grass-root level. Creating fully self-sustainable villages being our aim, we started taking note of every single resource available in the village communities that can help us achieve the dream.

When we visited one of the villages, we observed a lot of dried leaves scattered in ana around various places. These leaves are usually burnt by the villagers, sometimes leading to forest fire. To protect the environment, we planned to make the best use of these dried leaves. We planned to use them as a manure for the soil and the plantation. To create awareness, we asked all the inhabitants of the village to collect these leaves and get paid in return for the number of sacks provided by them. This was a turning point in the use of dried leaves in villages. Few of the inhabitants stored the leaves for plantation purposes and the rest of them availed remuneration.

Dried leaves have various other purposes rather than just being kindled.

The different uses of dried leaves that can be helpful for you are listed below:

• Insulation - leaves are an excellent source of insulation. Packing them in sacks and keeping them around the exposed areas of home can be very helpful in keeping the temperature of the house intact during winters.
• Mulching - This technique is very helpful in natural farming. Placing the leaves around the plants or just burying them a few yards underneath will add the necessary nutrients to the soil. This would help you get a healthy harvest in your kitchen garden while preserving the environment.
• Leaf mold - Leaf mold is the crumbled, compost like product when leaves decompose on their own. This can be a great addition to the soil structure. This enhances the water-holding capacity of the soil and also attracts a lot of useful organisms that are beneficial to the soil health.

These simple ideas can result in a tremendous potential in environment protection. Proper planning and the ability to make the best use of available resources can be a game-changer in the mission “sustainable development of communities.”

Every individual should be able to understand and assess the different issues such as Extreme water scarcity, erratic rainfall, and severe land degradation. Planned water and land management technologies and recommended ecosystem management practices can be beneficial in reducing soil erosion and increasing vegetation cover to a significant level.

If we keep all the above mentioned solutions in mind, creating fully-sustainable villages would be a cake walk very soon.