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Till 15 months back, I wouldn’t have thought that the outer covering ie peel of orange could have so many uses and no uses.

Those who are using it either in edible form ( it is and I did try but family didn’t like the taste) or as a home made beauty enhancer; GREAT.

When not being used then it would broadly go into below three outputs. Which of these do you like ?

Or may be this one

Image by Alexandra ❤️A life without animals is not worth living❤️ from Pixabay 

Or may be below. It however goes through a second round of input-output cycle of 90 days but is its worth the wait. And when its done all peels settles down as indicator.

All these three pictures each give a different choice. Make your choice. Which output would you prefer ?

So by the end of 2.5 months of re-using the peels my collection of plastic bottles which would otherwise have gone for plastic recycling was getting reused at home.

The compost bin started getting less load with part of that diverted for reuse instead of recycle.

They looked good together for a better tomorrow. And that’s how I didn’t need to buy any surface cleaner for my home for last 5 months. 

Less waste, less chemicals and savings was bonus. Only it requires two things 2 minutes everyday and some jaggery.

#sustainability #saveenvironment #reuse #peels #bioenzyme #plasticreuse

There are different takes on whether we should be consuming peels of fruits and vegetables or not. If you are already convinced that we can consume them and are doing so please do share your experience to enable more people to move to the best use of that.

But if not lets put the peels to the second best use of making multipurpose cleaners cum disinfectants cum drain declogger ( Bioenzymes) in 2 minutes.

And the result I got is this.

And this doesn’t end here. Along with putting the peels to a new use, I didn’t need to buy any surface cleaner for my home for last 5 months. Welcome to Race to -1.

#sustainability #peels #saveplanet #savenvironment #bioenzyme #waste #reduce #reuse #peels #leftover

What happens when you start something and cannot follow through ?
Some pressing health emergencies and for almost a month everything else including this Journey couldn’t move ahead.
It felt demotivated and really bad seeing the bins again getting full, peels getting discarded again and plants & compost both in intermission.
Don’t want to debate on right or wrong or ideal approach.
But important is to get back once things settle. So today was that day.
It was good to see compost bin was looking cooked. And finally put the collected egg shells with a stir after a long time.
And from tomorrow starts again the journey to better tomorrow.
Link to previous post: https://preetymundhra.com/2020/08/16/the-story-of-bottle-schools/

Education and Health are the key foundations of happiness of people. Fortunately there are some countries like Bhutan and Scandinavia who made it their first priority. Others like Guatemala inspire even more seeing the case of how they bridged the infrastructure gap on education with their inspiring Bottle School.

Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay 

Yes, school inside a structure made of Bottles filled with plastics. Dealing with their plastic waste on one side and providing a stronger & better structure within which children can come and study.

So all the pet bottles got filled with the plastic sachets of different edible and non-edible items with the help of stick and once full was used in place of bricks to create this structure.

This concept is as old has > 10 years and has been applied in many places including Asia. I was not knowing about it until a month back and other than the limited debate on ecobricks good or bad; the word hasn’t spread much on it.

Can we also help reduce and manage waste and create critical building blocks ?

More information on schools made by ecobricks can be found on website of this NGO which supports this initiative https://hugitforward.org/

Race to ‘-1’ : Day 340

Link to previous Day : https://preetymundhra.com/2020/08/08/garbage-or-bio-enzymes-ok-test/

If a borrower is having a spotless conduct in loan repayment so far that is a good candidate for on boarding  or increasing exposure.

Yes, track record of loan repayment is a good data point to start with and give due weightage.

But then also look for the borrowing pattern of the customer :

• If the majority of the borrowing is in form of revolving facilities where the servicing is only of interest , look from the perspective on ability of company to raise new funds if required .
• If you have lent to the company by takeover with a top up look if that is generating the expected returns in line with end use. This is to avoid situation where due to the purpose being a general the funds are partly / fully used to service  your or other lenders loan.
• With multiple lenders already there and new entrants coming in , multiple loans esp BL/PL with no collateral & end use restriction are being availed at the same time without one knowing about the other loan.

So if the borrowing is showing increase YOY without any commensurate change in business performance ; relook and understand the borrowing need , usage, future plans and overall serviceability which will act as leading indicator for any corrective action plan if required. Deterioration of account conduct is lagging indicator .

( Views expressed here are personal and doesn’t represent any of the present or past companies associated with ).

Attended a useful session organized by #refinitiv where WATER as a scarce resource and the challenges and perspectives of solving that was discussed by experienced panelists.

• Agriculture is directly using around 85 percent of the water resources and bal 15 percent is divided between industry and the people usage.
• Indirectly that agriculture output is what we and industry is using in the supply chain or food chain. So how do we collectively make the use of this 85% of ground water more sustainable and optimum? 
• Time we look at the true cost of the Agri produce in terms of the resource consumption and whether we are willing to pay for it . Eg the cost at which we currently buy a vegetable would be 5-10x if actual cost of resources are considered. 
• The free electricity to pump water is available is not to all the farmers. Majority of that goes into producing water guzzling crops where MSP is supported. Examples include rice, sugarcane,
• The land where they are grown is actually not suitable due to the soil and climate conditions which thus increases the water requirement.
• Those lands are more suitable for crops like Millet which is also a healthier alternative as well as water & climatically sustainable alternative . This one was my fav considering the fact that millet is also a good alternative for diabetic patients which a lot of today’s generation is prone to due to eating habits and lifestyle.
• Uncertainties in terms of vagaries of nature and it’s impact on agriculturist/ farmers needs to be looked as well. Farm loan waivers are a problem but what can we do to avoid the situation from arising only?
• The impact the water crisis in rural areas has in terms of number of lives , employment is huge considering the lives it affects directly / indirectly. How do we motivate ourselves and people around us to go and support with managing agriculture value chain on water allocation and distribution ?
• Dams although created were to act as reservoir of water in times when available in excess and to be able to manage when its availability is affected. But then there is a higher price for building dams as those are making those areas susceptible to earthquakes and other ecological imbalances.
• The saving of water by use of drip irrigation is not being done by many on account of initial cost and also on awareness issues. How can we further micro irrigation initiatives ?
• This is one part of the problem on the judicious use of available water resources. The other problem facing us all is on the availability of clean safe drinking water which is another bigger challenge. With major organized players now having water treatment systems in their industries, the same is partly addressed but the one still continuing in unorganized industries. In my view a community/cluster based treatment and disposal would help to address them.

One panelist made a very interesting point that whether our ambition to solve this is as big as the problem is. That’s a question we need to answer for ourselves and our future generation.