Newsworthy shopping bags, literally!

When she's not diagnosing patients at her clinic, she's busy meticulously crafting shopping bags from old newspapers.

Meet Ameeta Naik, a doctor by profession. She has managed to blend two of her passions - the environment and handicraft. The result: trendy, eco-friendly shopping bags.

Ameeta starts out with a pile of old newspapers. Using an old carton as a mould, she wraps the newspaper around it. The paper is then glued together with a homemade flour paste. Four rivets are punched in at the top and a pair of coloured, braided woollen handles are added. It's that simple!

If you choose a newspaper spread with colour ads, the result is a colourful bag. If you opt for an editorial spread, you have a black and white bag. Whatever you do, no two bags are identical.

Over the years, in her own small way, Ameeta has effectively managed to reduce her carbon footprint. The best part about her initiative is that it is extremely simple and it serves a dual purpose - old newspapers get reused and the dependence on plastic shopping bags is drastically reduced. Also, when the bags outlive their utility, they can be tossed in for recycling.

Ideas like these go on to make a positive difference to the environment. Kudos to Dr. Ameeta Naik!

If you would like to learn how to make these bags, email Ameeta at bobo.naik@gmail.com

Going beyond all the hype.

Today, being eco-friendly is seen as being 'in'.

Everyone is talking about recycling - from large multinationals to your local grocery store. Millions of dollars are being spent on 'Go Green' campaigns. Companies feel good, having done their bit for the environment. The media wants to be seen as being very responsible. But how effective are these campaigns? Has it resulted in a paradigm shift in our attitude towards the problem? Are we doing enough to rectify it?

Quite a few of us switched off lights for an hour during the Earth Hour this year and felt good about it. But we need to do a whole lot more than that to undo what we have unleashed over the past 100 years.

We need to go beyond recycling paper and plastics. We need to closely examine our lifestyle and identify areas where we can economise and optimise. For instance, changing one 60 WATT light bulb to a CFC can drastically reduce your electricity consumption.
By opting to dine in rather than take away, you can avoid the use of disposable plastics. Renting out movies instead of buying DVDs can help reduce the number of DVDs that would need to be produced and disposed of.

  

The good news is that we have finally acknowledged the problem. It is time we started doing something about it.

An eco-friendly search engine!

Created by Heap Media, ‘Black Google’ or Blackle is a search engine that is powered by Google. Blackle saves energy because, unlike Google, the screen is predominantly black.

A computer’s monitor apparently requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.

The black version of the Google search engine is hoping to save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine.

The energy savings may not be very significant (but yes, every bit counts) and the legibility of black Web pages is definitely an issue. However, the creators of Blackle need to be applauded for thinking beyond recycling paper and plastics.

http://www.blackle.com/

If every household replaced one regular light bulb with a CFL, it would eliminate 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gases - the same as taking 7.5 million cars off the roads.

Global warming: A problem with solutions

After years of debate, scientists now agree that we are indeed heating up the planet.

When we burn fossil fuels - such as oil, coal, and natural gas - to run our cars and light up our homes, we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This thickens the heat-trapping blanket that surrounds our planet, causing global warming.

The effects are devastating - melting glaciers, rising sea level, changing ocean currents, shift in weather patterns, irreversible alteration of the eco-system and the extinction of plant and animal life, to list but a few.

Unless we take corrective steps now to curb global warming, our way of life, our planet and our children are all in grave danger.

Each of us can play a positive role by making simple changes to our lifestyle. There is a lot we can do.

Download a PDF version of the little green guide to find out how you can make a difference. This booklet is available in English and Arabic.

For copies of the printed booklet, email thelittlegreenguide@yahoo.com

"We have not inherited the earth from our ancestors. We have borrowed it from our children."