Kolkata 05 June 2018 - Seva Kendra Calcutta’s (SKC) beneficiaries, officials and the Earthsmiles.net team celebrated World Environment Day at Seva Kendra main office, Tangra, Kolkata. The event which lasted from 2:30 p.m up till 5:30 p.m. was to create awareness among people about the rampant consumerism which leads to huge amount of things “thrown away” without a second thought. The effects of simply disposing of non-renewable resources and non-recyclable materials have a huge negative impact on our environment, and not recovering them will see existing stocks of these resources are depleting day by day until they will be completely exhausted. amusement the fate of a plastic bag from the departmental store to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

EarthSmiler Faraz introduces the Presentation.

The event started with dance performance done by the young children of beneficiaries of SKC which emphasised the value of environmental resources and how to protect the environment and adapt the methods of reducing pollution. The Earthsmiles.net team of Ishani, Krisha and Faraz then presented a slideshow on World Environment Day in Hindi, depicting ways to protect the environment, we talked about how ironic is it when say that we love our planet earth: We burn fossil fuels polluting the atmosphere, we throw maximum of the garbage and waste into the sea and also pollute other water bodies, we cut down trees to fulfill our construction desires, and indulge in many more (wrong) ways to love this planet.

The participants were shown how daily excessive use of non-renewable resources like fossil fuels are depleting slowly from the earth and soon will be exhausted. The team also explained why we should use renewable resources and advice and teach others also to use renewable resources. Also, the importance of Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle, Rethink was highlighted and tips were given on and how to implement these in our daily lifestyle.
• Refuse is to not take products or things like plastic bags, etc from the market as they contribute to the environmental degradation.
• Reduce is to lessen the use of non eco-friendly materials, as well as all non-essential items.
• Reuse is to put the waste materials and plastics materials to some other use if they cannot be used for their original purposes – “Upcycling” is creative reuse.
• Repurpose is to adapt to use waste materials in a different way, one its original purpose useful life is over.
• Recycle is to recreate some other products or same products using the waste materials – example new paper or new alloy from the old.
• Rethink is to think of innovative ideas to lessen or eliminate waste completely, often substituting non-biodegradable material with a recyclable/natural product.

EarthSmiler Ishani shows participants a manual shredder during the paper making workshop.

Finally, to demonstrate recovery of things we routinely throw away, the EarthSmiles.net team conducted two brief workshops on making colourful handmade paper using waste paper and making strong plastic fabric out of thin waste polythene bags – both which could be done as self employment projects for low-income groups. The process shown was simple enough to demonstrate how any person can recycle these waste materials at home. Hopefully, some of SKCs beneficiaries will be inspired to take what they learned here today into a successful green business!