sapgreen

The community page at Sapgreen is under construction now. This will be a place for all of you who are interested in trees and environment in general to write articles, share thoughts and even plan activities among yourselves. Every one of you would definitely have an idea for making the Earth greener. Publish the idea online here. Someone else might also endorse your idea and the idea may turn into action. Now, wouldn’t that be great? With that in mind, I’ve made a basic sketch of how the site would look like. However, the website is just a tool. What is more important is the people, the community and their ideas which make change happen. Make it happen.

Ultimately, if this serves as a common platform for all green lovers to share thoughts, change will definitely happen

The community feature will be ready in 10-15 days as there are still a lot of issues to be handled. Meanwhile, I will be providing updates daily here.

After 7 months of action, we had learnt a great deal of things. How people value trees and how a few detest them!! How important trees are yet how less importance it gets!! How varied are trees from each other and how monoculture is being promoted by the country!! The learnings are all like this. Khatta Meetha. However, the one big feeling we got was that the operations model we followed just couldn’t scale up. Our main motive when we started Sapgreen.com was to plant trees. A lot of them. However, the operations model we followed just didn’t permit that. So, we thought of a new plan.

During our past 7 months of operation, many people had expressed their intention to contribute/get involved in some way. However, we just couldn’t figure out how to allow them do that. In fact, we haven’t figured it out even now. As a result, the following idea. The idea is called open business.

• Sapgreen will be an open platform for everyone to discuss about the environment.
• Just register with us and you will be able to start a new article / write a blog.
• There will be a core group who will act as moderators and facilitators. This is only for taking care of offline issues such as tree-planting, finances, website administration etc.
• The most happening environmental news and blogs will be published/linked here.

That’s all we have thought of at the moment. More inputs from you will be really helpful.

We hope to release all the features we’ve mentioned above by the end of this week.

This article again is a remnant of the old website. The concept of carbon offsets we thought could be explained easily via a few writeups. However, we learnt a valuable lesson that it is a far more complex task than we first thought it was. In fact, a friend had remarked: “How can you expect people to pay for carbon offsets when they already default on government taxes?”. A very true statement indeed. In any case, I thought this article would be useful for further discussion on this site.

Carbon Footprint

The term “carbon footprint” can be applied in more sense than one. The actual meaning depends on the context in which it is used. Some of the commonly used definitions for quantitative discussions are:

• Carbon footprint is the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) attributable to the actions of an individual (mainly because of their energy use) over a period of one year. For example, you may have a carbon footprint of about 3 tonnes CO2/year owing to your home use, automobile fuel and other such activities.
• Carbon footprint can be seen as the total amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases emitted over the full life cycle of a product or service. For example, an ipod nano has 31kg carbon footprint by virtue of the energy used for its production.

In a more general sense, carbon footprint is a “measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide”. It is meant to be useful for individuals and organizations to conceptualize their personal (or organizational) impact in contributing to global warming.
As the issue of global warming and climate change becomes more and more important, it becomes necessary that we calculate the extent to which each human activity is responsible for the CO2 emissions. Carbon footprint is the result of this calculation.

Reduce your footprint

Following are a few tips to reduce your carbon footprint sorted category-wise.

Carbon from transport:

Keep tires properly inflated
Car pooling
Use a bicycle for short distances.
If you own a car and a motorbike, use the latter over the car wherever possible.
Switch off your vehicle at a traffic light
Replace old or worn out air filters
If possible, fit your vehicle with an LPG kit.

Carbon at home:

Turn lights off when not in use
Change from incandescent lighting to CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamps) or LED
Reduce red meat consumption
Recycle whatever you can, including cell phones
Turn off appliances at the wall when not in use. For example, the cell phone adapter.
Buy locally grown food whenever possible so that you discourage unnecessary transportation of food

Carbon at business:

Reduce paper consumption. Use electronic documents instead.
Reduce flights wherever possible. Instead of personally flying for a meeting, try video conferencing.
Install more doors and keep windows closed to avoid AC leakage.
A rainwater harvesting facility at your office could save a lot of energy required for pumping water.
Switch off computers and lights at non-working hours
Plant trees around the office to cut on air-conditioning bills

Offset your footprint:

Offsetting your carbon emissions remains an important gesture and planting of trees is a wonderful way to do so.
The first thing to bear in mind about buying trees as carbon offsets are that they should be considered as a last resort option. Surprised to hear this from us? Our intention is that you try to reduce your carbon emissions as far as possible and then offset the remaining through trees.
Try everything you can to reduce your carbon emissions first, such as the use of CFL bulbs or even LED’s for lighting; efficient use of water heaters and reducing meat consumption - there’s so much you can do that can actually save you money while benefiting the environment.
Having reduced your carbon footprint as much as possible, now it’s time to offset what you can’t. Planting trees are the best way to do this.
Another reason for planting trees is that we have wiped out so many forests in the past 200 years of industrial age that there are only three large ancient intact forests left around the world. One in Brazil, the second in Canada and the third in Russia. The Indian region does not have any large intact forest left except for some small patches here and there.

In the older version of our website, we had this section for corporate action. The idea behind this page was that a page meant for corporate action needs to be written in “corporate style”

However, we now have understood that there is no such thing as “corporate style”. The only truth is that we are a lot poorer in terms of trees than we were before the industrial revolution. The truth cannot be told in any particular “corporate style”. In any case, for record sake, I wanted to keep the old writeup. Here is how it was:

Companies around the world are responding to climate change in every possible way. The global scenario is fast changing. New requirements are being made mandatory in many nations to tackle the problem of global warming. The Kyoto protocol is a global initiative to make measures on climate change more accountable.

Every company and individual has a carbon footprint, whether you have a manufacturing plant or an IT service company. For a global company it becomes increasingly necessary to reduce their carbon footprint in all possible ways. It is equally important to spread the message of carbon offsetting among the employees.

What is in it for you?

• A number of commercial factors make it worthwhile to put action on climate change at the center of a company’s long-term objectives:
• The society is changing and is considering the environmental and climate change issues very seriously. Companies which act in this direction are considered as responsible companies by the society.
• Legislation are slowly coming in to tackle the environmental issues and the pressure on companies is likely to get tighter. As a result, environmental costs would represent a real business cost.
• In the years to come, companies which have strategic environment management programmes will appeal to investors as strongly future focused companies.
• We believe that working to promote environmental and social sustainability is good business practice. We also believe that even you would have the same ethos and hence we would ask you to partner us in improving the state of the environment.

What we offer?
Sapgreen’s vision is to provide simple, yet accountable green solution to the corporates in India. Our practices make it easy to incorporate clean environmentally friendly practices without affecting the normal operations of your company. The green merchandising solution is a great way to incorporate green practices among employees and clients. Further more we have a great way to establish your brand in the city you operate in a green way. For customizing our solutions for your company get in touch with us at sapg...@sapgreen.com

In the earlier version of our website, we had a section explaining the whole concept of how “gift a tree” works. Here is a reproduction of that article. However, since the working model is going through a major change, the old article may not reflect the current operations of Sapgreen.

Gifting a tree is easy. It can be just as personal as giving a bunch of flowers. Here though, the tree lives on forever.

1. Lets say, your friend’s birthday is a few days from now.

2. Click on “Plant a tree” tab anywhere on our site.

3. You will be immediately taken to our payment window.

4. If you would like to send a card to your friend, let us know his address, day to send the card etc. We will take care of the rest.

5. It costs only Rs.300 to plant a tree and see it growing. We will plant it in a public park for you, water it and look after it until it becomes big enough to take care of itself.

6. If you want updates on your tree periodically through mail, tick on “Status mails”. We will then send you email updates on the tree, its condition, height etc once in 6 months. If you want mail to be delivered to your home instead, you can opt for that also (We discourage paper usage though).

7. As soon as you have paid us, we will send you a “receipt of payment” mail.

8. We will immediately process your request and send the tree-gift-card to the address you have mentioned. We will also send you the “planting ID” using which you can know the status of your tree. The planting ID card you receive will also have the address of your tree so that you can visit your tree personally any time you like.

9. Know when and where your tree will be planted in “Find my tree” tab. Every week we update the information regarding where we plant in “Find my tree” section.

10. For the time till the tree is self-sustainable, it is our responsibility to look after it. You can check the status of the tree anytime during this period either through the “Find my tree” section or by directly visiting the site.

Please note:

* Tree-Gift-Card will be sent by normal post from Mysore. Normal postal delivery time applies.

* Trees will be planted in public spaces and hence will be public property. The credit of planting though goes to you, the tree-giver, the one who has planted it.

* Cheques and DD payments are also accepted. All procedures remain same. Instead of opting for credit card, enter cheque/DD. Tree-Gift-Card will be sent based on cheque/DD realization. So, a finite delay is involved in this case.

1. Our First News Item: “From software to saplings”, Deccan Herald, Saturday, April 5, 2008

Ashwin Upadhyay and Anilkumar, quit their plum jobs with an MNC in the Capital and have returned to Mysore with the aim of making it greener……..

2. News covering our inauguration program: “Sapgreen activities begin tomorrow”, The Hindu, Sunday, Apr 06, 2008

The campaign for increasing the green cover of Mysore will a boost with Sapgreen, an initiative to partner public, government, corporates and tourists to promote afforestation, all set for inauguration here………

3. Business standard coverage: “Software engineers turn green”, Business Standard, Wednesday, Apr 30, 2008

‘Say it with saplings’ has been the business model for two young software engineers from Mysore. They formally launched their venture, Enlen Marketing and Renewable Energy Systems Pvt Ltd, with an offbeat tree planting ceremony at a park in the Vijayanagar 2nd Stage here………

4. Regional Language coverage (Kannada Daily): “Keelimane Kai, Sasi Paalanegoo Sai”, Prajavani, Sunday, Apr 06, 2008