05-June-2019 - World Environment Day.
Every Year this days silently passes away in most of our lives. The day that tells a lot which most of do not hear.
Most of us are not aware sometimes not bothered of the environmental impacts happening in the world.
In the social media we may notice many visionaries talking about the environment and how to have a greener tomorrow for the sustainable. I would like to take this opportunity to spread the awareness and importance for a Greener life.
We are in a world where all the natural resources are getting exhausted. The natural resources like air, water are getting polluted. Environment temperature is raising rapidly. If this condition continues in another couple of decades the world would turn into a furnace, where no one would be able to live.
The effect of the Carbon Dioxide(CO2) - a green house gas is one of the reason for the environment temperature rise. More than the heat we feel, we should also know that the glaciers are melting (Glaciers maintain the rivers during the summer when the ice melts). This would result in drying up of rivers. At the same time the ice at the polar region melts which would result in the rise of sea water level. This would result in land areas getting swallowed by sea. These are several other environmental impacts.
Do we know the internet browsing we do adds to the global warming?
We are all in a connected world, where we cannot think about a day without Internet & Electricity. But we should know that the luxury we enjoy is at the cost of adding to the carbon foot print.
The current statistics says that we need to cut-down in CO2 emissions by half and double the energy production to meet the demand of tomorrow. That means we should be 4 times efficient than now.
What Can We Do?
To live without electricity and Internet is now not imaginable as it became the necessities of life. People live on that. Judicious use of the natural resources would help us to sustain.
Just think, if we could generate as much as green energy, and reduce the wastage of natural resources we would be able to neutralize the carbon trail that we leave.
My Initiatives for the last 6 Months
I had decides to clean of the carbon trail that me an my family leave on the environment. For this
1) Design for Energy Efficiency:- The key thought process was to attain energy efficiency. For this following measures were implemented
1) All LED - High efficient lighting deployed
2) FAN - BLDC fan that is thrice efficient than the regular fans.
3) Light color paints for the interiors with well positioned windows - Ensures sufficient natural lighting
4) Windows positioned to ensure proper cross ventilation:- This would reduce the need of cooling in the house. Like Fan
5) Roof with clay tiles and with heat reflective paint. To reduce the heat in the room.
6) Planted several trees around (Around 10+ trees) the 2048sq feet of land with house. Planted lot of shrubs and grass that would cool the environment around.
Design for efficiency helped to reduce the power consumption to just above 1 kWh.
2) Installed a Solar Off Grid Solution for the Home - A 320Wp Solar panel with an MPPT charger is paired to my Home UPS system, that would help to run the entire home during the day from solar energy. The system generates approx 1.0-1.5kW a day.
Even though the generation of energy is covers the electricity consumption, still we had only reached 40% Green mark. Why? We as human exhale CO2 that adds up to the Carbon Footprint, The vehicles that we use, Internet we use, the equivalent shared foot print due to the mobile towers (to provide us the connectivity), etc.
My next milestone is to go another 20% higher in the Green Mark by in another 6 months.
3) Home Automation:- Created DIY home automation systems, connected to opensource Automation Hub. This ensures that the lighting, water pumps, etc are monitored and managed to attain energy efficiency.
Other Green Initiatives
1) Planting Trees & having a garden to be more Green is an advantage, at the same time we need to maintain it. DIY water smart valves are being made and connected to the Home automation IoT platform which would decide how much to water the plants and trees. Various inputs such as the preferred time along with weather forecast is being used to decide the how much water to be released. The plants need for water varies from season to season, summer and flora, fruiting season needs more water, etc. These conditions are planned to be added to the rules in near future.
2) Monitoring the Gas consumption of home: -Planning to add mechanism to monitor the gas consumption and to add smart alerts
3) Vehicle Maintenance:- To ensure better efficiency, periodically maintain the vehicles and ensure that the tires have the right air pressure, brake disks / drums cleaned periodically, air intake filter cleaned, plugs cleaned, oils changed on time.
I monitor the fuel efficiency of the car during each refill and ensure that the vehicle is performing the best. In near future planning to shift to Electric vehicles.
4) Recycling of rejected water from RO system: -The RO water purifier rejected water is recycled to washing & irrigation
5) Planning to reuse the water from kitchen and washing machine for irrigation purposes.
6) Education:- I ensured that my family including my 5 year old son understand the need of judiciously using natural resources. Educate them to switch off devices that are not in use, use water and other natural resources for the need and avoid wastage.
7) Automatic Switching of Refrigerator to Solar Power when there is surplus energy available in solar.
8) Solar Water Geyser - Gets warm / hot water without the need of electricity all the year around. I do not have even a single electric geyser at home.
One of the achievement for me
Staying in a house at Bangalore during the summer with no Air Conditioner and very less usage of Fan seems to be a good achievement for all my efforts.
I would like to close here with a thought:- The water we consume a day, more than 99% of the water returns back to the drain / sewage. The water that do not return back is your perspiration / sweating.
Which means we have all the possibility to recycle 99% of the daily water use.
Lets all take the purpose of the world environment day seriously and try to reduce our carbon foot print.
Few Pics of My Home & Community
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