eco – Sdharma

Krishna comes back

swethakp — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 21:12:51 +0000

Some of you may know already the loss I incurred early this year. My first baby died during the last few minutes of his quick, natural labor at 43 weeks. He was beautiful, peaceful and has given me a lot. His perfect form, the abundance of love we received and the name we had for him, Krishna (god of love and compassion) confirmed to me that he is indeed a liberated soul.

A non-profit organization called Molly bears makes weighted (to baby’s weight) bears for still parents like us. Krishna was 7lbs and 11.5oz. When they were getting ready to make Krishna the bear, they asked if I had any special requests. Being an environmentalist, I asked them if they can use organic cotton or recycled polyester to make my bear eco-friendly. They researched vendors and got back to me that they can make Krishna with an organic cotton skin, stuff him with locally grown cotton sherpa and embroider or stitch in wooden eyes, nose, and mouth. They even offered me a choice of colors for Krishna’s skin. I said white because my Krishna was fair complexioned.

When I made this request, I remembered Krishna’s teaching to Karna in Mahabharata. Karna is an archer with natural talent but does not get the recognition he deserves as his foster parents are of charioteer class and his high archer skills are in those of royal class. The unethical Duryodhana, recognizing his talents befriends him by giving him a kingdom. Karna becomes loyal to his friend Duryodhana. In the war of Mahabharata, Pandavas’ kill Duryodhana’s supports one by one and when Arjuna is fighting Karna, Karna is about to lose, Karna questions Krishna does he deserve this? “Haven’t I been philanthropic, I just want the world to recognize my skills”. Krishna says, “Yes, it was not good the way you were treated. But instead of siding with the unethical friend, you could have strived to fight for recognition for others like you around the world who have skills but are not given opportunities”. This teaching stays with me. Essentially, it’s not just enough if I get eco-friendly products/custom bears but I should advocate for others after me to have this option.

With this in mind, I requested Molly bears to have this option available for future still parents. It does take them longer and it’s more expensive for them to make it. But this option is available if one is willing to pay more to have clean materials represent their loved angel and be kinder to the environment.

My Krishna came back as a polar bear today!

Thank you Molly bear!

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Fossil fuel free investing (for US residents)

swethakp — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 21:04:33 +0000

After greening your bank, your credit card, and making small investments for social good; if you are ready to take the next step to move towards environmentally and socially responsible investments, now is the right time! There are plenty of investment opportunities to choose from like mutual funds, ETFs and financial advisors who work with ESG (Environmental social governance) and/or SRI (Socially responsible investments) standards.

One problem with mutual funds and also investing with a financial advisor is that they try to balance performance and risk with diversification. Diversification dilutes your values and the performance is fairly flat. I tested this by opening an account with an ESG investor and a separate personal account on Motif with the same amount of funds. I tailored my personal investments according to my values. I made up all the losses from my advising account with the good gains in my personal account. My research was not based on the companies’ performance but purely based on whether they fit into my goal to divest from fossil fuel investments.

On Motif platform, you trade motifs which are groups of up to 30 investments each. I like the motif because you can save on transaction fees and invest without diluting your values by building your own mutual funds. I built two motifs based on Green Century’s guide and Clean200‘ list. You can divest from fossil fuels with these two motifs: motif1 and motif2. With these motifs, I am following my intuition that my investments will be more resilient if they don’t depend on fossil fuels, the price of which is prone to fluctuations.

Any sort of investment has its own set of risks but if you are going invest anyway, why not invest with your values?

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Vested

swethakp — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 21:10:44 +0000

I found this great organization called Calvert foundation which provides a way for us to fund the causes we care about in the form of small investments as low as $20. Check it out: Calvert Impact Capital. You get 1% interest on investment notes for 1 year! It’s like a Certified Deposit and you get to choose your cause. There are plenty of choices to choose from: affordable housing, environment, global good, health, microfinance, education, microfinance, fair trade and small business.

Instead of saving your money in a megabank and getting 0.05%, you can choose to invest in microfinance. There are more than hundred different choices to make an impact with your investment. So, pick an investment that resonates with you. Remember that you are supporting a good cause and are making money at the same time! I was particularly drawn to this since I am able to make direct investments for sustainable development in India.

The money you invest is not federally insured but that doesn’t mean it’s riskier than any other kind of investment like stocks or real-estate. It’s a risk worth taking to support what you believe in.

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Reduce methane at home

swethakp — Sat, 15 Oct 2016 17:08:52 +0000

Did you know that organics in the landfill is a major source of methane generation? Don’t take my word for it. Check the facts at cool2012 campaign.Organics like food, paper products, and yard trimmings when dumped in landfill get decomposed anaerobically due to lack of oxygen. This improper decomposition produces a lot of methane, one of the greenhouse gasses responsible for Global warming.

Each year we fret so much in the summer and wonder if it is Global warming. Of course, it is. Stop fretting and start helping. There is a lot of guidance at HowtoCompost . My friends in India can find a composter here.

I have been composting my food waste for over six years. I started with indoor composter, then taking my compost to community gardens near me and currently I take it to my organic food store which has a compost bin. Taking it to community garden was my favorite. I got a used paint box from a recycler to collect the compost. My roommate was so hooked to the system that she asked that I leave it behind for her to use.

If you have a yard, you can choose among worm composter, tumble composter, composter bins or a compost pile. I have heard that tumble composter is very easy to use.

So, what’s your composter?

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Move away from your Megabank

swethakp — Sat, 15 Oct 2016 17:08:13 +0000

Hope you have read my blog on changing your credit card and are excited to take more steps to divest from fossil fuels. Another simple and effective step is to move money from Megabanks to Community Development Banks. This makes sense even if you don’t care about the divestment movement. Instead of 0.01% in a MegaBank checking, you can get up to 3% in an account with a community-oriented bank!

Megabanks like Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase are ranked as the top three financiers of Mountaintop removal coal mining and coal-fired power plants in the US. In contrast, community development banks are not tainted by investment in fossil fuels and their mission is to lift up communities by investing in small, local businesses.

So, by moving your money from Megabanks: you can get more interest, help vulnerable communities grow and make sure that your money is not funding the fossil fuel industry. If you are inspired to make this change, visit Green America’s page. There you will learn about other positive impacts of this change and options.

Don’t worry if you are not able to find a bank in your area or state. After extensive research on their directory, I have found three well-established and federally insured banks for online banking. They are Hope credit Union and Self-help Credit Union. If you live in Alabama, Tenessee, Louisiana or Mississippi you can make use of the whopping 3% in HOPE’s rewards checking account. Otherwise, Self-help’s money market account interest rate has increased steadily over the last few years. These are not static interest rates either, they are expected to go up with the impending federal interest hike.

Since writing this post, I have found two other banks offering high-interest checking accounts. Aspiration offers 2% checking account, free access to any ATM in the world and an easy way to give to charities. LMCU is the other one that offers 3% interest checking account when you meet a few requirements.

So, what’s your bank?

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What’s your water?

swethakp — Sat, 15 Oct 2016 17:06:45 +0000

With the summer approaching so fast, I want to talk about the water we drink. I often wonder why people drink bottled water? Why do people think that bottled water is safer? I watched the documentary, “Tapped” which discredits each of the reason that comes to my mind. Tap water is more regulated than bottled water. Bottled water is self-regulated by the companies. In most cases, the bottled water is just tap water.

Plastic bottles leak toxins into the water and we are paying to drink that!

By buying bottled water, we are choosing with our dollars to support/cause:
1. Petrochemical industries – People who live near those industries suffer from chronic illness and we indirectly support that.
2. Water companies – They make huge profits often exploiting communities that live around those pristine water bodies.
3. Pollution – Only 20% of the water bottles consumed in the US gets recycled. It’s sad that the bottled water competes with tap water and the city has to take up the job of recycling.

Only a few states have been able to impose a deposit per bottle to ensure recycling. When you buy a bottle, you see 5c or 10c with states codes. It means the consumer pays 10cents more in those states and will get that back when they take it to the recycle center. Of course, water companies have lobbied heavily in state legislatures to not bring this law into effect in most states.

Some of the bottles reach the waterways and pollute marine life. Bottles and other plastic that reach the sea, decomposes and forms small shiny colorful pebbles which are attractive to fishes. It again reaches our system when we eat those fishes or sea salt.

Some say I recycle the bottles, isn’t it good enough? I say NO, it’s always better to reduce consumption.

I tried to summarize most facts from the movie, TAPPED but I suggest you watch it. There are plenty of options to filter water at home if you don’t trust tap water. So, what’s your water?

I published this blog originally on 04/01/12 on another blog site.

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Recycle plastic bags in grocery stores

swethakp — Sat, 15 Oct 2016 17:05:19 +0000

Plastic bags can be recycled! Yes, it is true. In fact, it is very easy to recycle plastic films as long as they are kept separate.

Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. Some of them get carried away by wind and end in our oceans. They cause harm to our marine wildlife and us. Research shows that even salt is contaminated with plastics.

To help more bags to get recycled, we need to separate them in our households. Most grocery stores have a ‘plastic bag only’ recycle program. Any store that hands out plastic bags is required to participate in this recycling program.

I asked store managers which kind of plastic bags they accept. I used to think that only plastic bags can be recycled here. But that’s not the case. They accept any plastic bag or film as long as they are not contaminated with food. That means bread bags, produce bags, newspaper bags, shrink wrap, zip lock bags and much more are recyclable! Please visit plasticfilmrecycling.org to browse the list of recyclable films and drop-off locations near you.

My Indian friends whose recycling shop won’t accept plastic films can consider doing something like this. My father who is aware of the time frame at which the rag picker comes around every day keeps the plastic film bundle separately next to the trash bin and he has noticed that he takes it for recycling.

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Simple yet Powerful

swethakp — Sat, 15 Oct 2016 17:01:13 +0000

I have been drawn into divestment from fossil fuels for a few years now. When we think of divestments, we think of big corporations moving their investments. Yes, that has a big impact. However, each of us can have a similar impact when we collectively divest from fossil fuels.

One of the first things to do is to change your credit card. If you have a credit card issued by a Megabank, you may be supporting predatory lending, coal mining, politics, and outrageous CEO salaries. You can check whether your credit card supports fraud, politics, big coal or poor customer service in Green America’s scorecard.

Green America has also compiled a list of credit cards through which you can support the cause that resonates with you. With one of these cards, a portion of every transaction goes to support causes like protecting the rainforest, saving wild cats or lifting vulnerable communities. Even if one of them don’t resonate with you, you will still be assured that your credit card transactions will not fund banks that support bad practices which led to 2008’s recession.

It is a pain to change credit card and to get used to a new system but growth always comes when we take the first painful step. This is the first to change the status quo.

I plan to write a blog every week introducing other ways in which I have divested myself. Hope you find it inspiring and simple to follow. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about my blog entries.

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