It's been 23 years for ECO-V. Back in 2001, some of you were invited to my home to discuss starting an organisation. Since then we have had so many activities towards protecting Nature. Mainly towards behavioral changes among us. But we never wanted to grow up as a large organisation. It was always running at low levels but with a greater positive impact among whoever around us and whatever we did.  Please check our website www.eco-v.org 

Since I moved to India 7 years ago with my family many things have changed. We do not have any more foreign donors for our projects. It's just because I personally did not want to receive big money and take the responsibility of doing projects when I am not in the country. But we never closed down our office even during the Pandemic. Still we are running our selected activities. Sometimes I miss our busy days with so many field projects taking place, research and education but again I am quite content with whatever is happening today. 

We have 5 Metta Gardens functioning with personal sponsorships, Zero waste School - St. Michaels College, Kollupitiya with the sponsorship of Cinnamon Grand Hotel, Eco products promotions and sale with the partnership of Sustainablee, and our own Metta Garden produce sale to local kiosk and nursery plants selling to a nearby plant nursery. Other than our own staff we are paying for three other women who make our products. We have been sponsoring a needy child at SOS for last 9 years and that scholarship goes out from our own earnings. So ECO-V has become a self sustainable organisation for last 7 years. 

We have been practicing conscious living and zero waste office for the last 23 years and we are very proud of that. Our carbon foot print is very low and truly in ecofriendly practices. We have two staff members including very energetic Pasini Alwis, a young agriculture graduate who looks after all the gardens and eco product sales. Last year we managed to send her for a training on climate change in Thailand and ECO-V sponsored 50% of this tour. Awantha is our young gardener who looks after the Metta Garden and nursery by assisting Pasini. I visit Sri Lanka every other month and then we do training and awareness sessions for the community. 

We keep our face book pages updated about our activities and restarted our newsletter electronically this year. 

So, I just wanted to update you all about us and please feel free to get involved with us in our activities or visit our gardens to learn about organic gardening and protecting biodiversity and buy our eco-friendly products. Those contributions will help us to build up our finances and do our Nature related charity work too. 

We are very much looking forward to running another Yathra but still feel the country's situation is not favorable for such a big campaign. Therefore, we decided to run a residential training programme on climate change this year. Please feel free to share your ideas with us please do let us know if you would like to get involved actively. Also please send us your suggestions or what you expect from us and what you can do to help us going forward. 

I thank you all for being with us at the moment and trusting me. Special thank goes to all garden owners who trusted us and gave the responsibility to improve their gardens with Metta Concept, which is helping people and our Nature. This is one of our passionate projects and we truly believe in it as it helps healing people and healing Nature. ECO-V journey will continue like this.....

Almost forgot!! We received an award last year December from the Green Building Association in Sri Lanka. Its for the "Green Community Commitment of the year"

   

• Email to a friend •

It's another New Year but we at ECO-V will be continuing the same activities from last years. 

Well.... writing a blog has become a lazy activity for me now. I think its due to other social media like face book, Instagram and WhatsApp.  They are more popular and I always write short articles and post it soon after one especial thing happens. But our blog is part of our newsletter, hence we thought of maintaining it continuously for our Newsletter readers. 

I am sure you all know that I have been living in New Delhi for past 7 years and our ECO-V office is still functioning in Colombo. We have an energetic project coordinator back in Sri Lanka who looks after ECO-V activities. She is our dear Pasini Alwis and she is the one who reminded me to start a newsletter. Then I said may be we can keep our blog live so anyone can read it. 

Pasini Alwis

Pasini and Kanchana designing a Metta Garden

ECO-V was always active even during Covid-19 time as we had our Metta Garden and we have been helping urban biodiversity very much when people had shut down themselves inside the homes. 

Pasini joined us in 2021, first as a volunteer after finishing her bachelors degree in Agriculture. She started looking after our Metta Garden in Boralesagamuwa and then we started making other Metta Gardens around Colombo. So it's Pasini mainly who looks after our five Metta Gardens and I will be writing more about them soon. Today as first blog post for year 2024, I thought that we can show you some photos about these Metta Gardens we have in Sri Lanka. 

If you would like to read more about the Metta Garden Concept here are some links for online articles. Thank you for reading and see you soon!

https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/a-humanitarian-action-for-other-living-beings-creating-space-for-urban-biodiversity-through-buddhist-gardening/

https://www.iucn.org/news/commission-environmental-economic-and-social-policy/201807/creating-urban-garden-all-colombo-sri-lanka

https://jneb.net/activities-buddhistenergy-eco-templeproject-metta-garden-new-delhi/

https://userblogs.fu-berlin.de/urban-rural-migration-japan/2023/12/01/metta-garden-a-buddhist-practice-of-loving-kindness-connecting-japan-and-asia/

Well a blogpost after two years of silence. It does not mean that I stopped working. After the pandemic I accelerated my work in Sri Lanka and started travelling for work. Anyway since it's Environmental month I wanted to share this story. A true story of my own. Hope you will like it!

Living with my own plastic waste in New Delhi, India for the last 6 years but life is never wasted! 

We shifted to New Delhi as a family in July 2017. Many things were so different from our normal lifestyle in Sri Lanka. Living above ground and not touching soil every day is one big change I had to get adjusted to. How can I continue not to give our waste to the municipality? How can I make my own compost? What are the methods I can adopt as a person who had been practising a zero waste lifestyle for the last 16 years in Sri Lanka. I was thinking….can I continue my good practice or not??? So, soon after we found our new apartment, my main concern was to find out the mechanism for waste management. The girl who started working for us as our helper said “Don’t worry madam ji! Waste truck comes and we can give everything in a black bag” 100 rupees per month. Nothing more, very easy”...Oops…..no…no….no…that method is not for me. I wanted to give it a try…Then I started my mission to continue my best practices while living in a first floor apartment.

I was continuing the conscious consumerism along with the 10R method that I learned from Australia many years ago (Reject, Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Replace,Recycle, Rethink, Remember, Repeat). Therefore, life was easy with options available. So, many materials were forbidden by ourselves as conscious consumers (Single use bags, straws, fizzy drink bottles, etc). “Kabadi Wala” (Recycling waste pickers) are available in Delhi so the recyclable materials are not an issue at all. Then I did some online research to find out a composting method in Delhi. Luckily there were some good people who have been making their own compost in Delhi on terraces. But, I had only a balcony. So I came up with the mud-pot composter. Made some holes in the pot and started collecting wet waste on the small balcony I had.  Ok…that’s solved. Now starting the ecobricks! Oh…where can I get some plastic bottles? “Kala….how can I get some 1litre plastic bottles? Oh…madam ji, I will bring you, I have so many. Replied kala - our helper. Then I had a coconut shell spoon which I brought from Sri Lanka. So I have a long stick too. Right!!! all set to continue the zero waste lifestyle.

Next morning…when I went to see the mud composter ... .my effort was in pieces ... .a cat or somebody had dropped the pots and it's broken ... .oh…dear me! ..back to square. Ok more research for composting in balconies or terraces. Hooray!!!….I found the solution…”Sampoorna composter”. Ordered one and collected wet waste in a plastic box until I got my composter. I had to travel a very long distance to bring this composter but later on I saw how composting on terraces became very popular in Delhi and I even got another one delivered to home via Amazon. 

My composter on the first floor balcony

Later on I found recycling options for many things like Plastics, Some Polythene materials like tetra packs and fresh milk packets (Whichever came with Recycling symbol) Glass, metal, cloths, shoes. So they all were collected and given to recyclers.   

However, making ecobricks and storing them under the bed for the last 6 years was not an issue at all. The ecobrick is made in the kitchen pantry whenever we get soft polythene. Then the next step is chucking it under the bed in the storage.  

ecobricks stored under the bed

The 5th of June is World Environment day. Many celebrate it with nature friendly activities. I searched about the theme for this year’s World Environment Day, and it made me smile when I saw the theme #Beatplasticpollution. Oooppss…it was the theme for my whole life. All of sudden I remembered our ecobricks nicely sitting under the bed. Henry, our helper who is very good at making them as his responsibility, helped me to take them out, count and weigh them. 80 ecobricks of 1 litre disposable water bottles of 23.1kg weight. Hmmmm…which means 13 bottles per year and 1 bottle per month…oh…nooo….to much….Usually I took about 2.5 months in Sri Lanka to make one ecobrick. Anyway, I know single use plastic is very common here and very difficult to avoid. So, I was making myself feel better about not throwing them away, and giving them to the municipality. No contribution for the Great Garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. Even the plastic/polythene waste we generate when we travel are trapped inside them. I will find a place to give these 80 bricks for making some structures or to be used in making roads with Tar. If all of us can manage our own single use plastic we can make #Beatplastcpollution our daily hashtag.

Plastic tags come with new dresses

These are the items I stuff in the ecobrick

No need to wait for a World Environmental Day to make it happen. Everyday we breathe is a World Environmental Day! 

 

Month of April – Experienced the Covid-19, feeling was “facing as it is”

Month of May – recovered and waiting to go to Sri Lanka, but no luck as Sri Lanka closed entry gates for us even as Sri Lankans living in India. Feeling was Disappointed, sad but what to do? as there is nothing we could do!

Month of June – Others celebrating World Environmental day (While I was celebrating throughout the year). Feeling was “oh…well…time to share the work”

All past months were so crazy and not like any other year, the Environmental day celebrations were overwhelming!! Invitations for conducting sessions via zoom, Teams or Google. Most were accepted but few were refused as they were overlapping with other sessions.

So, it was a high time for a holiday. Still could not go for long holidays due to pending work.

Anyway, we decided to go just out of Delhi and spend two nights. Without thinking much, we decided to go and stay at Karma Lakelands; (https://www.karmalakelands.com/) a place that we always wanted to experience. The place belongs to one of our good friends who is very much eco conscious.  

When we arrived there, we were so happy about not choosing a hotel room to go and stay as we really enjoyed the setup of our villa. I started enjoying the Nature, riding bikes with my son Nipuna and watching birds and ants, walking, enjoying wildflowers and night sky which we can’t do in the city) and of course reading a book while Thushara was busy with meetings online until late night.

Next day morning my friend Diki texted me and asked whether I can run a Nature walk to their staff. This was an agreement between us at the time I told her we were coming to stay in their resort. So I was not surprised by the invitation.

Since it is like an oven during day time with 42 degrees Celsius these days, we agreed to run it at 5.30pm.  Diki came to pick me up from our villa. Bunch of youth with nice smiles were already there. You know all were wearing masks as it’s mandatory nowadays. So how could one know that they had nice smiles? Of course, I could not see the smile but I saw their smiling eyes!!

Then some parents and kids who are residents within the property arrived, I thought that’s all! Surprisingly so many of their staff members kept on arriving. It was a big group but I was so happy as it’s one of the most divers groups I have ever met to run a Nature walk to connect with Nature. Unfortunately, two sensory organs were blocked by the mask but all took a chance to lower the mask and smell and taste when it was the time to connect via nose and tongue.  

Karma Lakelands is full of biodiversity and we only could walk about 50-60m and already one hour and thirty minutes was passed. Since it was getting dark by that time, we decided to finish the walk.

It was very interesting crowd who got actively involved with the walk, connecting with Nature using five sensory organs by following my instructions. Next day morning too I had a meeting with Ashwani Khurana founder of karma Lakelands and some invitees to share some ideas for eco resort that they were developing these days. I was happy to give some suggestions there too. It was just before we left Karma Lakelands.

So, this is how my relaxing holiday became a working holiday but the feeling was very satisfied – so the final outcome was “Relaxified”