Some of the Environment enthusiasts of YFS Chennai have been meeting regularly to brain storm, discuss and come out with a new approach to solve the ever increasing problem of Waste management in the city and its ill consequences in our daily life!

We met up with the officials of the Solid Waste Management from the Corporation of Chennai to get their understanding on this issue and how we as an organisation could help address it. Our aim was to get segregation of waste done at source and offer simple, practical and doable solutions to the common people with the kitchen, paper & plastic waste.

We realised that before we embark upon a new initiative, we must talk to and get sufficient hands-on knowledge of the solutions we intend to offer to others for practice. We learnt about many success stories and one of them was about Mr Indra Kumar of Home Exnora who has been practicing Zero Waste Management in his home for a very long time. A simple down-to-earth person who is always willing to share his wealth of knowledge to anyone with interest to keep the environment clean and green. But all that he expects from us is to be Punctual as he feels time must not be taken for granted! A good lesson learnt by all of us and esp those who turned up late!!

Our volunteer Vishesh Jain has shared his experience after the visit to Mr Indra Kumar’s home on 19th Nov.

We visited the residence of the internationally renowned creator of Home Exnora, Mr. Indrakumar,at Shankar Nagar, Pammal, as a part of our Environment-Solid waste disposal management programme, where we will work with the Government in educating the residents of Chennai on the importance of waste segregation (into wet and dry) and coming up with a plan to recycle/dispose the different kinds of waste in an appropriate manner.

His home is a zero-waste home, where everything from solid kitchen waste to wastewater is put to good use. The visit was an eye-opener, to say the least, where we learnt much more than came to.

When he realized that tannery effluents were polluting his groundwater, this ingenious environmentalist created a freshwater table around his house, which takes in all the flooded rainwater from the street, and acts as a natural filter to the tannery wastewater.