Greener Gadgets Design Competetion

Areas of sustainability to consider include:
1. Energy
2. Materials / Lifecycle / Recycling
3. Social & educational development

Grand Prize: US$2,500
Two Runners Up: US$1,000 each

LAST DATE: January 27th 11:59pm EST

More Details Here

Tata's 1-lakh ($2500) Car “Nano” Launched

The eagerly-awaited (since 2003) Tata 1-lakh car “Nano” is finally launched today at the Auto Expo in Delhi. Rediff has a nice article with photos.

According to Tatas, the car will have a 624-cc petrol engine generating 33 bhp of power. It will sport a 30-litre fuel tank and 4-speed manual gearshift. One of Nano's three versions will come with air conditioning, but will have no power steering. It will have front disk and rear drum brakes. The company claims mileage of 23 km per litre. It is also reported that Nano would have 20% greater internal volume and would be 8% smaller in size than its nearest competitor Maruti-800 (priced around 1.8 Lakh).

Ratan Tata, while unveiling the Nano, said: "The car will meet all current safety norms and all emission criteria. The pollution it will cause will be lower than 2-wheelers." But still the project has been criticized across the country by Pachauri and other environmentalists since it might add more infrastructural and environmental load on the ever increasing global warming problem in India. Besides, there have been protests in West Bengal and Delhi by around 12000 landowners whose land was forcefully acquired for setting up a production factory for the same project.

Despite, people are looking forward to the car, which would cost 1.5 times the Bajaj Chetak scooter. There have been signs by other auto-firms or similar projects on the way. Bajaj showcased their 1-lakh concept car 3 days back and even Suzuki (Maruti) has announced that a 660cc low-segment car is in the pipeline.

Anyone having interesting info about the car, plz add here :-)

Social Awareness Week at HFI - Dec '07

As a part of CSR efforts at Human Factors, we recently concluded a Social Awareness Week at our workplace. This small effort helped in giving light to some of the less-talked-about issues (especially within India) like global warming, corporate community development and other social and environmental effects.

We tried to convey the theme of "being socially aware" in every part of the campaign.
1) The paper used across the campaign was single-side printed paper that is otherwise thrown away or shredded.
2) The posters stuck in the office were made by cut-outs from old newspapers and magazines.
3) The prizes for the competetions were made by NGO's and a part of the total cost was contributed to their cause.

The award winning documentary by Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, was also showcased as a part of the event. The "Awareness Quiz" where the participants were divided into two teams turned out to be the major crowd-puller with almost 100% attendance.

Pankhudi All India Meet 3 - Dec '07

Pankhudi All India Meet 3 - Reflections

An event Pankhudi volunteers wait for, year after year, was hosted this time by Bangalore Chapter.

Pankhudi Foundation's All India Meet 2007 on child-related issues was attended by speakers, volunteers and representatives from different parts of India.

Hours of discussion sessions were followed by an overnight team outing to 'Nandi Hills' which rejuvenated the participants on the concluding day of the conference.

The Six Sins of Greenwashing

Green-wash (green'wash', -wôsh') – verb: the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.



Terrachoice - an environmental marketing firm - describes the 6 sins as:
1) Sin of Hidden Trade-off
2) Sin of No Proof
3) Sin of Vagueness
4) Sin of Irrelevance
5) Sin of Fibbing
6) Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils

Increase your Gyaan about the 6 sins ...

CII to launch CSR Rating Programme for Indian firms

Click on image to read full article.

Going Green: What can you do?

From daily smog to the rising threat of global warming, it’s pretty obvious that we all need to clean up our act a little.

Morgan Stanley releases Little Green e-Book with a daily dos-n-donts to make your life greener and help tackle climate change.

Much has been said about how to go about doing this at home, but what about in the workplace? Copiers, computers, even old floppy disks, can make a huge impact on the environment. Working Green explains 50 ways to reduce your office’s waste.

Fastcompany gives another half-a-hundred options, from the universal (catch that rainwater!) to the specific (lose the plastic bowls!).

Time to GO GREEN guys !!!