Earth Day Network Blog Updates

Keeping in mind that women make 85 percent of consumer choices, Earth Day Network-India commemorated Women’s Month with a first-of-its-kind event in India – a Go Organic Garden Party in Kolkata co-hosted by Casa Puro of the KL Jalan Group of companies.

Earth Day Network-India just launched its Bags for Earth campaign to help turn old clothes and other discarded cloth items into useful bags and provide a green alternative to plastic bags. The program launch was held in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Calcutta Yuvis at a housing complex in Kolkata.

Earth Day Network has a fun new campaign to promote carpooling among students in India: Backseat Buddies!  

In India, not all primary and secondary schools have buses. Backseat Buddies encourages students from the same locality to travel together to and from school, instead of traveling in individual cars. This not only cuts down on carbon pollution and conserves resources, it helps to allieviate the severe traffic congestion in many Indian cities.

By Neela Majumdar

In Kolkata, the week-long festival of Durga Puja makes the whole city feel magical with incredibly beautiful temporary temples everywhere. These intricately-decorated structures are called “pandals.”

Durga Puja is a time when the whole city comes alive, with millions of people from all over the world visiting the pandals around the clock.

Earth Day Network-India is actively supporting "Green Magic," Rotary Club's tree planting program that will plant 10 million trees in India.

On July 29, 2012, Green Magic was launched in Kolkata. Over 2,500 school students participated in the launch event by planting a tree and taking a sapling home to plant. Members of the Rotary Club planted trees alongside the children and made it a landmark event in the history of environmentalism in the state of West Bengal.

India is a sub-continent with a surface area of 3,287,260 km, oceans on both arms of its peninsula, high mountains, both cold and hot deserts, diverse flora and fauna, major rivers, the largest deltaic region, and a population of 1.2 billion. 

Mobilizing this region for Earth Day 2012 was a mammoth task.

By Rishika Das Roy

To commemorate Earth Day 2012, the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) joined with Earth Day Network-India to organize a photography contest for children to explore the environment through their camera lenses. The theme for the contest was Earth Day 2012’s slogan: Mobilize the Earth™. 2000 entries were received. The results were announced on World Environment Day (June 5). 

One thing that I have gotten used to rather quickly in Rio de Janeiro is all of the waiting. 

I’ve already spent considerable amounts of time waiting in the security lines to get into the Conference Center and waiting for my meal in the cafeteria at lunch time.  And I’m sure that anyone attending Rio+20 (including myself!) will give you their opinion on the one and a half hour bus rides each way to get from the city to the Conference Center.

Earth Day Network catalyzed and coordinated over 1,000 events in India for Earth Day 2012.  These events spanned all of India’s states and geographic regions; from the Himalayan region to rivers valleys, coasts, deserts, and biodiversity hotspots in India’s Northeast and in the Western Ghats, there were multiple programs in all. More than 35 million people participated.

Earth Day Network (EDN), in collaboration with Aspen Institute India and the Public Relations Society of India, Kolkata chapter, organized a Women and the Green Economy (WAGE)® luncheon in Kolkata on April 26. Read More