GIRD Participated in Dubai Municipality community environmental cleanup campaign (this was an annually campaign in association with Clean Up the World Pty Australia and UNEP, the program for this year will be from 25th to 28th October 2011. Theme of the campaign of this year was “Our Place…Our Planet…Our Responsibility”) – View Award Pictures


Clean up the World Campaign 2010
Blog – Clean up the World Campaign

Inaugurating the seminar, Prof. S.P. Gautam, Chairman, Central Pollution Control Board, Ministry of Environment and Forest, Govt. of India said, “Bin paani sab soon (there is no life without water). We need to have a fine balance between water and environment for sustainability. There is nothing like waste water, we need innovative technologies for conserving, recycling and reusing the same water.” Prof. Gautam also released a souvenir on ‘Sustainable & Innovative Solutions for Water Woes’ on the occasion.

The keynote speaker for the day was Prof. V. Subramanian, Professor Emeritus, School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, who gave a global scenario of water availability. “90% of the water available on Earth is in the form of oceans and a small proportion is available for human usage out of which 67% is used for agricultural purpose, 9% for households and about 6% for manufacturing and mining activities. One of the ways to resolve water problems is storage. Our storage capacity is one of the lowest in the world, even though we have rivers which overflow during monsoon,” he added.

The seminar also highlighted that about 750 million gallon sewage is generated in the Capital every day, out of which only 48% is treated and rest 52% is discharged to the drains from where it reaches Yamuna. The Vice Chancellor of DTU, Prof. P.B. Sharma informed, “We at DTU are taking concrete measures to reduce our dependency on water supplied through MCD and have established a Domestic Waste Water Recycling Plant’ of 30,000 litres capacity, to treat the waste water collected from hostels and other buildings of the University and reuse it for horticulture purpose. The challenge is to sustain DTU’s water table in the long run and encourage water harvesting and recycling at the campus by adopting innovative ways. We do not believe in only preaching but also practicing.”

Click here to View Proceedings

GIRD  is a non-profit Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) registered under the Societies Registration Act (Act No. XXI of 1860), Established in 1996 by a few social and environmental activiststo work for the protection of environment and promotion of environment-friendly products and practices.

The founders of GIRD were  aware that to sustain the participation of the people in and to give meaning to environmental protection programmes, the NGO should also engage with socio-economic problems of the disadvantaged sections of the people, particularly with regard to education, health and nutrition, housing, sanitation and empowerment. Therefore, GIRD has been undertaking various programmes in these areas since its inception.

GIRD has been able receive encouraging recognition, approval and support from various governmental agencies and academic and research institutions for the action and campaign programmes undertaken by it in the past years.

We acknowledge the support and assistance extended by:

• School of Environmental Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University
• Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Delhi)
• Delhi Technological University (formerly Delhi College of Engineering)
• Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India
• Ministry of New & Renewable Energy, Government of India
• Department of Science & Technology, Government of India
• Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
• Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC)
• Department of Environment, Government of N.C.T of Delhi
• Delhi Pollution Control Committee