Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Hindustan Times (Lucknow) - Live
ON A GREEN MISSION!
HT GREEN AND CLEAN CRUSADERS
The auspicious day of Akshay Tritiya became a turning point for Dr Maninder Kaur, Rekha Hasija and Anju Dialani. The trio had gathered on a hot and humid day four years ago (May 13, 2013) to search their aim in life.
Anju took the lead and asked others to leave the airconditioned room and move out in the open. Braving the heat, they walked down with no trees for shade and any water to drink. They saw garbage lying scattered despite container being there. Flies were hovering around an animal’s corpse while cows were feeding on rotten fruits and vegetables.
“This moved us as the scene at city roads was no different. Dejected, we returned home and decided to do something on this front,” says Maninder. They formed Eco Friends Welfare Society on May 30.
“We got a mission in life. Today, our society has 11 executive members and 205 members who are working for the cause of better environment. The task of serving the environment and making Agra a better place to live is our sole aim now,” says Anju. A commerce graduate, she has her own business and also runs a play group school for tiny tots. She is also an RSS activist.
Maninder has done doctorate in commerce and is a lecturer at RBS College. She paints and also writes poetry. Her book on poetry will be released shortly. Rekha has taught English for 18 years in NCR and for the last two years in Agra. “Social work or joining any social group was never in my ‘to-do list’ after I left my job as a teacher. It was tough in beginning. We planted 500 saplings and kept monitoring its growth till we arranged for tree guards. We started organizing street plays and arranged placards with limited means to run the affairs,” says Rekha.
The trio is elated on bagging the Clean & Green Award during the HT Woman Award ceremony in Lucknow. “This recognition is certainly a big motivation for us to march ahead. As the news spread, we started receiving phone calls from Cantonment Board, schools, degree colleges and multi-storey apartments to exhibit our methodology to develop organic manure from house waste,” says Maninder.
Talking about their methodology, Anju says, “In any household, 60% of the waste is generated from kitchen and is wet but when it changes location and adds to garbage pile in localities, being packed in polythene bags, it often poses threat to cows. This is our target area and we prepare organic manure from the waste.”
They were named ambassador for cleanliness in October 2015 by Agra Nagar Nigam for Swachh Bharat Mission. The society has taken the project of vast area near RBS Degree College where they prepare organic manure from the waste.
The Eco Club also processes the huge quantity of flowers offered at the Mankameshwar Temple in Agra. They are invited by apartments where such kitchen waste is plenty and on office premises where trees shed lot of leaves. These crusaders turn into labourers making piles, adding required ingredients and process the waste into organic manure.
They expressed gratitude to Lokswar convenor Rajeev Gupta who informed them about the HT Woman Awards and got them nominated. They now aim to move to rural areas where organic manure can be a boon to farmers as they can easily make it with natural resources which are available in abundance in villages.
The task of serving the environment and making Agra a better place to live is our sole aim now. ANJU DIALANI, ECO FRIENDS WELFARE SOCIETY