Ragpickers: Hail Them and Save Them!

After posting this picture of ragpicker girl in my Children’s Day post, it was high time to write about ragpickers in Indian cities. This section constitutes of children and other marginalized poor of Indian society. The cause of ragpickers requires us to take issues like solid waste management seriously.

There will be several shocking facts to learn about this informal (because Indian government does not recognise it 😦 ) ragpicking industry that cleanses our environment and takes care of bulk of recycling.

Learn how insensitively the city, society, police, and municipality treats them.

Read the post here at It’s A Free World.

Green Games and Kids: Blog Action Day

Today is blog action day for environment. I could not have missed making this post today.

When I made post about Go Green-Activities, I tagged people for playing Flex Your Power challenge. Most people except Ish and Nishu found it boring. So I thought I would find more interesting games.

One most important comment in my last post about environment was that most people are aware about energy conservation, yet do not have motivation to do it. My first solution to motivate others is to catch them young.

When I was kid, my Dad told me I should not waste water because people in Rajasthan do not have water easily. They travel miles to get potable water in Thar desert. His teaching about water conservation has stayed with me ever since. I still hunt through the house to fix leaking taps lest a drop of water be wasted. Saving water is part of my everyday life, I do not go out of way to do it. We need to make kids aware, so that energy conservation and recycling is ingrained part of their everyday life.

In these gamer generation, kids can be informed about such serious subjects as energy conservation in an interesting way such as games, simulation or some creative web site. These should be discussed through activities in class. I tried one of the games on my very young cousin, she was hooked. This game called Myabodo (meaning my house) was meant to create awareness amongst UK children.

In Myabodo game, you can create your own house by making a series of choices. It is a basic principle of teaching to show the consequences of your choices and mistakes so that you learn from them. In Myabodo, you can see the consequence of each choice you make in your house. Every time you make a choice, you can see how much energy you used, how much water you used, and how much waste you generated. When you house is created, you can check how green was it. I made my house, only I do not know how to embed my code in wordpress template. 😦

There are more such games. Electrocity is a game where you are the Mayor of the city and you have to make decisions for the welfare of the city. These games and education about global warming should be part of school curriculum.

Learn more about green games at:
Blog Action Day Feature: Electrocity
Play Golf for Environment
Green Games and Puzzles for Kids
Also read on recycling:
50 painless ways you can help environment today
Recycle cans to make beautiful trays: A fun tutorial
Make fun paperbags out of newspaper

How to Reuse Your Laptop to Make Money

I came across this interesting video courtesy Recycling Supermarket. This video by Hank Green at ecogeek.org is doing several rounds on the Internet. It has some innovative ideas how you can safely disassemble your laptop, reuse some parts, and yet sell some to ebay for money.

I am really not sure if I could pull it off, but if someone could they would not only protect environment from fumes emitted from battery, but also earn some money and yet help a non-privileged to have a low-cost laptop courtesy their laptop manufacturer.

Here is the video:

Reuse your laptop

Also read:
Recycle mobile phones for children in need
McDonalds waste to power buildings