To make world a better place, we must worry about harnessing energy and resources correctly

Sustainability, in its widest meaning, is the capacity to sustain or continue a process over an extended period of time. Sustainability in commercial and policy contexts aims to keep natural or physical resources from running out so they can be used for a long time to come.

Rohit Kumar Maskara, Project Manager, Centre for Environment Education (CEE) said, “What we are doing is producing, consuming, and disposing of the materials. Our idea is not to set up any parallel system. We try to extend the existing system and integrate all the stakeholders including the informal sectors, and they are the key players to work with the investment in ministry. So, the per acre extraction of material in India is 1580 tonnes compared to the world’s per acre data is 450 tonnes. Our recycling rates are still lower. ”

“India is the second largest farming nation in the world and generates almost 500 million tons of crop waste every year, out of which 16 per cent is being burned currently, which releases 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the environment. And what we’re doing is we’re utilizing the so-called waste and making some value-added products out of it, namely pulp and paper for packaging applications and engineered green bots for financial applications,” said Onkar Siddeshwar, Engineering Lead & Founding Member, Craste.

“The approach we take is waste processing and recycling, anything has to be refined down to its original level to be able to be reused. If you want to make this world a better place, we must worry about harnessing energy and resources correctly,” said Babu Padmanabhan, Founder and Chief Knowledge Officer, STEER World.

On what role individuals can play Tanya Singhal, Founder, Mynzo Carbon & Solararise said, “Sustainability is all about the small actions that each one of us takes in our limited small role. The role can be anything. It can be segregating the waste it can be saying I’ll put a solar rooftop on my roof. To carry a biodegradable bag when I go around the market to not take single-use plastic. All those small actions can make a much larger impact. The circular economy is not just about CSR,  it’s about creating value.”