Making a house from trash, water from air and Aussies going green in a slum...

While many of us have just woken up to the idea of a climate emergency, some have worked hard to kick the CO 2 habit. Ketaki Desai profiles three such people to see what we can learn from them

SECOND-HAND LIFE

What makes a 40-something sell their car and start cycling to work? In G V Dasarathi’s case, the motivation was his daughter’s childhood respiratory problems. “My daughter was five, and had awful asthma. I was contributing to the very pollution that was the cause of her illness. When I can’t make changes in my own life, then how can I blame anyone else,” says the 59-year-old, who ten years ago built his dream home — from kachra.


“We took many of the materials from demolished homes,” says the mechanical engineer who cut building cost to half. From tiles to commodes, everything in their bathroom is second hand. An award-winning architect helped them turn waste into a home that draws many curious visitors in Bengaluru.

The sustainability doesn’t stop with the house. The family does not have air conditioning, cars, or a TV connection. Dasarathi also harvests their grey water — water that comes out wash basins, kitchen sinks and bathwater. “We use that for the garden, or for commode flushing. We also drink the rainwater we harvest, which one can do with a UV filter,” he adds. His blog, Low Carbon Life, is where he collects all the learnings from the last few years of dedicated environmentalism in his everyday life. “There are plenty of little things all of us can do to help, such as buying clothes that don’t need ironing or buying thin bath towels that dry easily. That reduces the load on water bodies and our groundwater.”

BARE NECESSITIES

Mark and Cathy Delaney were college students who wanted more from life than the average middle class Aussie (stable job, expensive car, fancy vacations). The couple wanted to be able to make a difference in the lives of people in the developing world. That’s why they not only packed up and moved to India in 1995, but decided to spend two decades living in slums in Delhi, mostly in Janta Colony. “The essence of good community work is understanding the lives of the people you’re working with,” says Mark.

Living without air conditioning, a washing machine, a fridge, as well as any form of private transport, the Delaneys didn’t even realise they were living a low-carbon life. It wasn’t until their son Tom took an interest in environmental issues, and an article about them in an Australian daily mentioned the sustainable aspect of their lives, that they began to focus on it.

Tom Delaney, 22, and his father cowrote a book about their lives titled Low Carbon and Loving it. In it, they identified six ways to break down one’s carbon footprint — the items we buy, our diet, local transport, long-distance transport, and electricity. That’s why they don’t drive, don’t eat meat, and try to take trains over flights as much as possible. Tom, who works in an NGO in Lucknow and lives in a slum, says, “The gist of our book is that things like flying, driving, and eating meat are luxuries, not essential to live a happy life.”

The book stemmed from the family’s frustration with the thoughtlessness with which other Australians lived back home. Mark notes that they just assumed that Australians must be working to reduce their very high carbon emissions, but the reality was that they

were more focused on the newest car model, or whether their football team is winning. Tom says, “The average carbon footprint in Australia is 20-22 tonnes of CO2 a year, whereas the average Indian is closer to the sustainable level of two tonnes.” Mark and Cathy are back in Australia for a year to settle their younger son into college, and it hasn’t been easy to keep their footprint as low as it was in India. When travelling to Melbourne or Sydney from Brisbane, where they live, they opt for 12 to 20-hour train rides instead of hopping on a plane, and they still don’t use a car. “The list of what is essential in the modern world keeps getting longer, but part of our purpose is to challenge those assumptions,” says Tom.

THE AQUA MAN

While most residents of Chennai were grappling with water shortages this summer, D Suresh — referred to as Solar Suresh by many — was flooded with H2O. “It started 25 years ago, when I saw water stagnating in my house, and how it was breeding mosquitos, so I started harvesting rain water,” says the 72-year-old.

The next project on his green docket was the one that lent him his nickname — he installed a rooftop solar plant after years of searching for the right vendor. In 2012, he finally managed to install it, and the 1 kilowatt solar set-up provides the electricity needed for his computer, refrigerator and everything else. “Now, I am part of a new scheme called net metering, where people like me who have excess solar power give it back to the grid. And in the evenings, I can take power from the grid in return,” he says. Other than his domestic biogas plant that he uses to produce manure to grow organic veggies on his terrace garden, his most recent acquisition is an air-to-water machine. “The machine, produced in Mumbai through a tie-up with an American company, compresses the moisture in the air to give cold water. It runs on electricity, and my next goal is to put the machine on solar energy.”

Not only does the planet gain from his efforts, he does too. He pays just Rs 500 every two months for his electricity bill, and while most Chennai folks were forking out thousands a month for water tankers, he generated his own at just 50 paise a litre.