Environmentally conscious people of Bangalore joined the world at a global work party
Environmentally conscious people of Bangalore joined the world at a global work party
Even as the political situation continued to be volatile, techies spent time planting trees, riding bicycles and holding rallies across the city to fulfill the wishes of seven American friends, who are aiming to curb carbon footprints in the environment.
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| All for a cause: The bicycle rallyu00a0 created awareness aboutu00a0 curbing carbon footprints in the environmentu00a0aroundu00a0 30,000 saplings were planted at Hoskote in the Manddur Forest area |
The day also saw around 160 members of Green Connect, a voluntary organisation from Infosys, plant 30,000 saplings at Hoskote in the Manddur Forest area. The event was a part of Global Work Party, an online campaign by the forum 350.org, which was held worldwide on Sunday.
"It was a good experience as such individual efforts create a pseudo pressure and awareness is created. Such kind of events make people come and do something that helps a larger issue," said Hitesh Sharma, a software engineer with Infosys and the prime of Green Connect.
The Global Work Party is the brainchild of seven friends from Middlebury College, USA led by Bill Mc Kibben, a leading environmentalist and the author of the Eaarth, a book on environmental changes. In India around 71 cities participated including Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.
Revealing that the campaign was registered every four minutes and 7,347 events were held across 188 countries, Bijal Vachharajani the South Asia Co-coordinator, 350 said, "We're calling it a Global Work Party, with emphasis on both 'work' and 'party'. We want to show that people can get serious about the climate crisis.u00a0 The goal of the day was not to solve the climate crisis one project at a time, but to send a pointed political message that if we can get to work, you can get to work too."
Around 13 NGOs across Bangalore conducted several events like cycle and public rallies, street plays, exhibitions and lectures on global warming to spread awareness on the ill-effects of carbon footprint and gas emission on the environment.
The organiser of a cycle rally, Usha Ramaiah, from Kids for Tigers, a non-governmental organisation said, "We had corporates participate along with children. Many of them didn't know much about issues like carbon footprint and emission. But after the event they went back more aware."
However, not all agree that such initiatives really help. Environmental activist Leo Saldhana from Environment Support Group said, "This online campaign is not going to change anything. India should not run after everything that the USA does. We have many issues to clear in India."
