As you know, Pune is currently facing tremendous water shortages and it also has a massive garbage disposal problem. Not only is this causing inconvenience to the citizens of Pune, but it also increases the basic costs of living. In this era of rapidly rising costs, this is one that can actually be reduced. As chairman of the Greenland-2 housing society in Viman Nagar, I wanted to tell you about the initiatives we have undertaken to tide over these problems on the occasion of the start of the Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan.
Our housing society was formed in 2000. We have 57 flats in our society. The bore-well in our society yielded about 30 minutes worth of water, which was insufficient. As a result, we needed to buy 3 water tankers daily. We executed our rainwater harvesting (RWH) project in 2002. This was Pune's first RWH project. Immediately after the project was executed, our bore-well yield increased to 9 continuous hours of water. This reduced our tanker requirement to zero ! The Pune Municipal Corporation gave us a 5% property tax discount to all 57 flat owners.
Like all medium sized societies, our society also generates about 12 tonnes of wet garbage annually. We built compost pits in 2010 which converts our entire wet garbage into manure. The PMC has given us another 5% discount for this.
Our annual electricity bill was about Rs 2,50,000. In the common areas, we had 135 tube-lights. We replaced all of them with CFL lamps. We also carried out a rationalisation of the load on each meter. This reduced our bill by nearly 40% to Rs 1,50,000. This was despite the increases in the electricity costs.
These days, everyone talks about CO2 reduction because it causes climate change / global warming. When we did these things, we never really thought CO2 reduction, but it turns out, that these small steps we took have reduced our CO2 emission by more than 8 tonnes annually. Climate change is a global problem. We cannot expect the world to change if we don't. If we all take small steps, we can make a big difference.
However, what is most important is this - yes, we have reduced CO2 emissions, and have become a green society. But, in doing so, our monthly maintenance charges remain at Rs 1/sq. ft, while the nearby societies are as high as Rs 8/sq. ft. If you add the cost of the maintenance property tax etc - we are saving tens of thousands of rupees a year. We are proud to be one of Pune's first green societies.
Many other societies have also implemented this system after seeing our example. I wish to tell our experiences to everyone to enable them to initiate such Green Initiatives, which will help them tide over their water problem , reduce Pune’s garbage disposal problem, save on electricity & reduce their carbon footprint. Imagine the change to our city's carbon footprint, improvement in our ground water table and a resolution to Pune’s solid waste management. 
Our Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, will start the Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan from today. How better to support that, than to start with our homes and housing societies. Clean the nation, save the environment and best of all, save tens of thousands of rupees.
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