Flickr photo by Tatiana Gerus

A recent Los Angeles Times article, “Curry leaf tree, a touch of India in the backyard,” reminds me that my dad’s old office had a curry leaf tree growing just outside his window. From time to time, while he was working, he would see desis drive or walk up to his office building and step up to the elevated garden area to grab a bunch of the fragrant leaves to go. My grandma lived next to his office and she planted the tree many years ago. Of course she wasn’t the only one to do so in sunny southern California.

Rishi Kumar’s grandmother brought curry leaf seeds from India, and his mother planted them 18 years ago at her home in Diamond Bar. Now the curry leaf has filled out into a mini-grove of slender stalks, bushy with the pointed leaves essential to Indian cuisine.

…

After graduating from UC San Diego in computer science, Kumar came home to his parents’ house and started gardening seriously. He started a community-supported agriculture project, or CSA, called the Growing Home and Learning Center, based out of the 2,500-square-foot garden around the house. He put in a series of cinder-block terraces, heavily mulched with forest humus and horse stable bedding, and started planting. An Ayurvedic garden is out front, where the lawn used to be; in the back, plants reflect his family’s Punjab roots: holy basil, neem (a tree believed to have medicinal properties), Indian jasmine. (LAT)

For more information on the curry leaf tree read the rest of the article. It’s part of a Tuesday series called the Global Garden.

Behind that stream of steaming hot coffee pouring into your cup is a waste stream of coffee grounds. Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez of Back to the Roots (BTTR) view the huge amounts of coffee grounds waste coming out of coffee shops as a huge potential for urban mushroom farming. The UC Berkeley students were in their final semester with corporate job offers in hand when they heard about growing gourmet mushrooms from coffee grounds and independently reached out to their professor for more information. (Read a Q&A with Arora after the jump.)

The professor put them in touch and they got to growing their business idea. They asked Peet’s Coffee for used coffee grounds and set up ten test buckets in Velez’s fraternity kitchen to try out mushroom farming. Only one bucket grew a crop of mushrooms.

They took the single success to a famous Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, to get those mushrooms checked out–they were sautéed and deemed good. (If you’re wondering, mushrooms grown in coffee grounds do not pick up a coffee kick to their flavor.) The two budding entrepreneurs took the same bucket to Whole Foods and caught the interest of store employees. Their idea also caught the interest of their university, which awarded them a $5K social innovation grant.

What’s happened since those early days is remarkable. In six months, the mushroom growing venture went from having product distributed in one Whole Foods to national distribution. Last year Planet Green reported that BTTR became “the sole oyster mushroom supplier to the entire North California region of Whole Foods while transforming over 10,000 pounds of coffee ground waste per week from Peet’s Coffee.”

Peet’s, which sold BTTR’s mushroom growing kits in its shops, proudly proclaims that it is the primary source of BTTR’s coffee grounds, and plans to give them 1 million pounds of grounds to reuse this year. Whole Foods also sells the grow kits and provided the venture with a low-interest loan for local producers.

But that’s not all. When these two urban mushroom farmers put up an ad on Craigslist to get rid of their spent coffee grounds with broken mushroom roots, they discovered a market for their own waste stream. The mushrooms enrich the grounds as they grow leaving behind a desirable alternative to chemical fertilizer. It sells as a premium soil amendment.

The White House recently highlighted BTTR as a “Champion of Change” for its sustainable business model. Keep reading to find out more about what Nikhil Arora has to say about growing and eating mushrooms.

As a recent college grad, why did you give up the security of a post-college job offer to become an urban mushroom farmer? Did you ever have any doubts about your choice?

After Alex and I first came across this idea in a class, it was a very step-by-step process our last semester. We brainstormed, ended up growing one test bucket of mushrooms on coffee grounds, had a local restaurant try them and like them, got some initial interest from WF [Whole Foods], a $5k grant from our [university's] Chancellor–and by that time, with all that support building up from our community we looked at each other sand said “we have got to do this!”

We started seeing the potential for turning waste into food and local jobs and wanted to run with it. The first months were some of the toughest, and there were many days where we would look at each other, knee-deep in coffee grounds, and ask “what are we doing??”–but the friendship that Alex and I developed early on was crucial to carrying us through those early tough days.

The grow kits look way more fun than the Chia Pet I got as a kid, with the major benefit of producing edible mushrooms. Are the kits primarily for educational/entertainment value? Or can the home kits also compete against other mushrooms sold in stores when it comes to taste and price?

The kits are definitely a ton of fun (grow up to 1.5 in as little as 10 days) …by far the most fast growing food out there! However, the nice thing is they also compare on price–and that’s something we really work for because we know for this grow-your-own movement to really take off, it can’t just be a one-off fad/one-time purchase. These mushrooms go for around $12 lbs in many stores, so there’s that price parity right away, but the neat thing is that we actually sell replacement bags & offer a monthly mushroom club online–so those who really want to grow their own food can continue to do so (keep the box/mister) and save money!

What’s your favorite dish featuring mushrooms? Do you eat more of them today than before you started urban mushroom farming?

My favorite dish has to be the mushroom tacos our warehouse manager Osvaldo cooks up–they are absolutely delicious! Definitely eating a lot more mushrooms now than before–have a much greater appreciation for them!  

What are three things that people can do to build an innovative and sustainable business idea into a successful reality?

1) Focus–especially early on, pick one thing (a product, a service, etc) and work endlessly to become the very best at that one thing, however niche. We learned that lesson the hard-way early on when we were pursuing a handful of different products/services related to this concept, and not focusing on entirety on one..it almost put us out of business.

2) Build partnerships–it takes a village to build a company. Do not underestimate the power of partnerships–find unique partners who can take your brand to the next level, find creative ways to offer them value-add as well from supporting you so they become fully invested in your future, and leverage their networks and communities. Always look to make every partnership a two-way street so you grow together!

3) It’s all about the team! No matter how great an idea is, you cannot build a successful company without an all-star team. It’s not the product or idea that has helped grow Back to the Roots–but an unbelievable team (family, more so!) that all believes in our mission & vision and is willing to work hard & innovate to achieve our goals.

Enter the Semmozhi Poonga, opened to the public in late November, 2010. I visited on December 29 for a cost of Rs. 5, and was pleasantly surprised to find a park with well-maintained and sittable grass, lots of trees and shade, playground equipment for kids, and benches occupied by young lovers.

Of course, the land on which the park sits is steeped in Tamil Nadu politics. Here’s the long story, courtesy of The Hindu.

The short story is that the Tamil Nadu state government leased the land to the Madras Agri-Horticultural Society, which in turn sublet part of the land to the Hotel Woodlands Drive-in Restaurant in 1962, reportedly the first of its kind in India.

In the late 80s, M. Karunanidhi’s DMK party took back power Tamil Nadu state assembly from its rival AIADMK after ten years. The new government eyed the Society’s land, because the society was now under the leadership of an ally of the AIADMK.

After 20 years in the courts, the DMK finally successfully got back control of the land in 2008. The first casualty was the popular Woodlands Drive-in, which closed its doors shortly after. The land was then closed off for more than a year, and the park was finally opened in late 2010.

What happens to the park in the next year is a mystery; Tamil Nadu is due for assembly elections this year, and given the anti-incumbency trend in the last three elections, it isn’t known whether an AIADMK government will look kindly on a park in the middle of town bearing a message of gratitude to Karunanidhi above its exit:

I hope it sticks around. It is a nice, big, green space.

Growing up in a family of post-1965 transnational immigrants, our history is deeply connected with the democratization of air travel — countless flights to and from India, Canada, Nigeria, and the United States. Our stories begin and end in airports. (Last flight)As part of the no-flying challenge, the couple crossed continents and oceans to explore solutions to the problem of aviation sector emissions, meeting with environmentalists and planners, including youth activists in India and Vietnam. They crossed the Pacific and Atlantic by container ships and traveled by train through Asia. They also had the infuriating experience of flying to India during the year because emotional, political and logistical factors prevented them from either skipping South Asia or traveling there by land/sea.

Post-challenge they continue to write about the latest developments in green travel and aviation emissions. They also took time to answer my questions.

How did your families and friends react to your decision to stop flying for a year?

I think some of our friends and family members may have thought that we were more adventurous travelers than we really were. Getting around the world in 365 days without flying doesn’t have to involve rappelling through canyons or trekking across Central Asia. We took a mix of container ships, ferries, trains, and buses to get around. [Train Travels slideshow]

We’ve heard that only about 5% of the people on the planet use aviation. Exploring life without planes felt very normal; it’s what people have always done, and most people on the planet still do.

What is your most memorable experience from the project?

The Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic crossings were particularly memorable. By the time we got on board the cargo ship that would take us from Seattle to Yokohama [slide show], we were exhausted from having spent the past month madly planning for our year ahead. We finally slowed down as we stood on the deck as the ship pulled out of harbor, watching a spectacular sunset with the shimmering Seattle skyline and Mount Olympia in the background.

It was better than any plane journey we’d ever taken.

For the next ten days we were grateful to have this gift of time and of discovery. It was amazing to look out the window and realize that we were in the middle of the Pacific, surrounded by 2,800 containers and with no land in sight. We’d flown over this ocean so many times without ever appreciating its size and depth.

It also gave us a very intimate view of the workings of a modern day cargo ship, and a glimpse into the invisible world of global shipping. Our cargo ship back home from Europe to the US was smaller, but the diverse crew, including a contingent of Sri Lankan sailors, immediately made us feel at home.

Do you have any advice for people who want to help reduce global emissions by cutting down or eliminating their air travel but feel torn by the desire to attend a family wedding across the world or visit grandparents in person, etc.?

Barnali’s brother’s getting married in India later this year, and yeah, we’ll be flying there. We can’t imagine not being there. British writer George Monbiot has a word for this: “love miles” — all those dirty miles we fly, and then justify using love.

We’re trying to deal with this in three steps: understanding the problem, taking personal steps, and trying to fix the larger system. We started off trying to understand the problem.

Aviation’s responsible for about 4.9% of our total impact on the climate. An economy flight from San Francisco to Mumbai and back has the impact of driving a car for an whole year! It takes a while to internalize, but when it comes to the climate, binge flyers can be worse than SUV drivers.

Next, we’re trying to cut back and substitute. We usually fly to India every year to see family, but now we hope to make that basically our only flight each year. Buses, trains, and cars usually beat planes, though that varies; you can check the numbers for your next trip at www.TripFootprint.com.

Finally, though personal efforts are nice, they don’t mean much unless we can make bigger changes: better rail/bus alternatives, more business flights replaced by cheaper and greener remote conferencing, and an end to subsidies for dirty transportation options. We’re supporting climate and transportation justice groups. If you want to learn more, or don’t know where to start, consider the wonderful Transportation For America coalition (www.t4america.org).

As many people are aware, the Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) was an American company. The plant was technically operated by its subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), which was 51% owned by UCC at the time of the disaster.

In one of the strangest, and most fateful, twists in the legal history of the Bhopal disaster, a U.S. District Court decided in May, 1986 that UCIL was an Indian company (“a separate entity, owned, managed and operated exclusively by Indian citizens in India”), and therefore any litigation regarding the Bhopal disaster should be done in India. The decision by the District Court was upheld on Appeal.

The transfer of legal authority — in effect, the U.S. justice system saying, “hey, this is not an American company, so it’s not our problem” — significantly weakened the damages that were likely to be rewarded. Indeed, the final damages, reached in an out of court settlement, was only $470 million. When all was said and done, that came out to $2,200 for each person killed, and about $500 for each person injured. Neither UCIL nor UCC ever had to acknowledge culpability, or take responsibility for cleaning up the still polluted site of the Union Carbide Plant. A Dow Chemicals executive later stated that the amount “is plenty good for an Indian.” Even with the conversion to Rupees, I can’t see how $500 is a significant help for a person who may be living with a debilitating injury, with children who are born, even years later, with serious congenital birth defects associated with (still) poisoned groundwater. It’s not “plenty good”; it’s laughable.

A commenter on Sandhya’s earlier thread mentioned the Sambhavna Clinic, which was built specifically to care for victims of the disaster. There is a “donate here” button; if you have a couple of bucks to spare, you might use it.

Finally, Suketu Mehta has a column up in the New York Times today. He does lament that Dow Chemicals hasn’t done anything to help clean up the site. But what he doesn’t mention is that the reason for that is that the U.S. justice system washed its hands of the mess in 1986, and the Indian Government, which is the only entity that today has any legal responsibility to do anything for anyone in Bhopal, meekly accepted it.

What are your thoughts today? Have you read anything insightful or enlightening with regards to the Bhopal disaster in recent days?

A few days ago, I received a press announcement for a new line of luxury bottled water: B’eau Pal. (Oo la la!) But the fine print was a little less enticing:

The unique qualities of our water come from 25 years of slow-leaching toxins at the site of the world’s largest industrial accident. To this day, Dow Chemical — who bought Union Carbide — has refused to clean up and whole new generations are being poisoned.

An explanation? Suffice it to say that The Yes Men have been at it again. In 2004, one of the Yes Men impersonated a Dow spokesperson on BBC World TV and announced that the “company was finally going to compensate the victims and clean up Bhopal.” (We blogged about it here.) Immature? Perhaps. But it was remarkably satisfying to watch Dow, with its tail between its legs, distance themselves from this false announcement, which temporarily decreased Dow’s share price by two billion dollars.

Some of you may remember that stunt. Others of you, like me, may even be old enough to remember when Bhopal unfolded in December 1984. (And I’m young enough to have associated Indira Gandhi’s assassination earlier that year with trick-or-treating.) As Bhopal prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of this disaster, a recently released report by the Sambhavna Trust shows that

local groundwater, vegetables, and breast milk are contaminated by toxic quantities of nickel, chromium, mercury, lead, and volatile organic compounds. The report describes how a majority of children in one nearby community are born with serious medical problems traceable to the contamination. [source]

I’m trying to find a copy of the report, but in the meantime, find it worth mentioning that the Sambhavna Trust, composed of scientists, doctors, writers, and social workers, is working to “evolve simple, safe, effective, ethical and participatory ways of treatment monitoring and research for the survivors of Bhopal.” Part of this approach involves re-examining what in their words has been the dominant treatment of Bhopal victims so far– “the indiscriminate prescription of steroids, antibiotics and psychotropic drugs [that] is compounding the damage caused by the gas exposure.”[[source]](As the spawn of an Indian physician who emigrated to the United States in the late 1960s and as an antihistamine junkie, I cautiously agree that Sambhavna may have a point.)

Watch below as the Yes Men collaborate in their latest stunt with Bhopal activists, including Sathyu Sarangi (pictured above) from the Sambhavna Clinic, who attempt to offer random Londoners a taste of their toxic water before attempting to deliver it to Dow headquarters in London. (Dow doesn’t seem to be at home.)

Given that some younger people (at least in this video) have no memory of this disaster, I think that this PR gimmick is effective in raising awareness about both the disaster itself, and the fact that much, much more needs to be done. But what say the mutinous hordes?

1. Water availability in India is “rapidly” running dry and is an issue that needs to be confronted soon before it faces a severe water crisis. Only 67% of rural Indians have access to water in their homes (as opposed to 95% in 2005). Solutions can start with rainwater harvesting for large buildings and fixing distribution losses.

2. Invasive species “are the second biggest threat to biodiversity after deforestation.” India loses a great deal of valuable plants and animals because of invasive species, but at the same time, many of the introduced crops, such as soya and wheat, are financially viable and important. Solutions could include microreserves for native plants

3. The loss of natural habitats creates situations in which lions, leopards, and monkeys, amongst other animals, create major problems for humans in their daily interactions. As animals ruin property and take lives, humans are tempted to start killing important parts of the environment. The main solution here is not ruining the animals’ native environments, or creating reserves.

4. India’s energy grid is direly overtaxed, resulting in major power shortages for much of the country. Building efficiency measures, such as those suggested by the Obama Administration in America (reconfiguring buildings to make them more sustainable and making sure future construction is more environmentally friendly, including natural cooling techniques and solar panels.

5. Mining causes significant soil erosion and deforestation, in addition to forced relocation of tribal peoples. Mining needs to be regulated more strictly by states to prevent widespread illegal mining and environmental ruin.

The crux of all of these reports on World Environment Day is that India’s rapid growth is driving equally rapid environmental destruction. An argument often put forth in developing countries is that it is unfair to ask people to make environmental sacrifices during a period of growth and industrialization when Western countries did not have to make the same choices. Yet, as we get a glimpse of above, India, as a dense country of 1 billion people, faces unique challenges that need unique responses. Action to solve these problems now, even at the expense of slightly slower growth in the future, will allow development to be sustainable and last longer. The new elections have ushered in a lot of optimism for India’s economic future; hopefully the government will recognize the need for smart and sustainable development policies. Wherever you are in the world, there are many things you can do to help make the world a cleaner and greener place.

P.S.: Sorry for the lack of links, the wireless at my grandmother’s in Bombay is just a little slower than the one in Chicago =)

the dollar value of wood that is not sustainably harvested… Almost half of the world total (46%) occurs in India, where the annual timber depletion exceeds that of the next 25 countries combined, although the population of India is also almost as large as the combined population of those 25 other territories. [Link]

Forest Depletion: The size of each territory indicates the annual rate of depletion of forests, measured in terms of US dollar value

The second is a map of poverty around the world, in terms of the number of people living under $2/day

The size of each territory shows the number of people living on US$2 a day or less, adjusted for local purchasing power: barely enough to survive, let alone thrive

Three points:

1. India has a lot of people, which is part of why it’s on both of these maps. Note, however, that India is far larger than China on both, so sheer population alone doesn’t explain what we’re seeing
2. Poor people will cut down trees. If you want a greener world, maybe you need to increase the green in people’s pockets.
3. Sadly for the poor, cutting down trees will hurt them in the long term, like eating your seed corn. Forests protect land from erosion, increase the quantity and quality of water resources and decrease landslides [Link]. Unfortunately, overharvesting is a prisoner’s dilemma where overexploitation is individually beneficial but collectively detrimental. You need good governance to overcome a problem like this because of all the externalities involved.

It’s not going to be an easy problem to solve, but since the first world has an interest in third world forests soaking up their carbon emissions, perhaps it can be part of the solution.

Seriously? Let me break it down. Global warming is bad (and not a myth). Thus, hybrid vehicles are good. Clean energy like wind and solar are good. Saving energy is good. Drilling for more oil (especially domestic) is bad. Suing polar bears to drill for oil is bad. Driving a gas guzzling hummer is tacky (and bad.) Paying high prices at the pump is bad. Bhangra as a source of alternative energy is so not good.

Get educated on the energy crisis, kids. Register to vote. Then vote for the candidate, whether Obama or McCain, whose stance on energy is most like your own.

Desi States of America is a weekly Tuesday night show that is screened on Pan Desi available on your cable channel of Colours TV nightly at 9pm. Desi States of America has a stream of shows uploaded on youtube, and to me it seems like the show is a desi version of a college version of a less funny version of the Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live. Not bad, just not great. I get that the clip above was trying to be ironic – like when Jay Leno hits the streets to ask every day Americans questions. But there’s something so pathetically gut wrenching when a guy is asked to name alternative energy sources and he responds, RED BULL.

Given all the news coverage about the rise of the Chinese economy, you could be forgiven for thinking that the world’s most populous country is hogging all the world’s resources, while the developed nations are fighting for scraps.

But, at least with transportation fuel, you’d be wrong. California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California’s 20 billion gallon gasoline and diesel habit is greater than China’s! (Or Russia’s. Or India’s. Or Brazil’s. Or Germany’s.) (link)

It’s a remarkable statistic. The first question that jumps out is, of course, why do Californians need to drive so much? The number comes from a recent report issued by California itself (PDF here), and the report mentions some of the key reasons for the jump in consumption: more population, more cars, low fuel prices (until recently), lack of public transportation, lack of fuel alternatives, the absence of effective CAFE standards, and consumers’ preference for large, gas-guzzling vehicles. I would also add that California is a warm state, which means people like to gun the A.C., many areas have high speed limits, and most towns are designed so that you can’t really walk anywhere.

The second issue raised by the statistic is a familiar one — developing nations are sometimes blamed for challenging the comfortable life-style of the United States (for instance, see this post), when in fact the U.S. needs to start by looking in the mirror.

Which leads me to a related complaint. Environmentally-minded Americans have traditionally been particularly anxious about “overpopulation” in the third world (some of my students have said things like this to me, and not long ago I had an unpleasant conversation with a colleague along the lines of “India == Overpopulation”). Population growth is indeed a serious concern in big countries like India and China, but the number one culprit from the perspective of environmental degradation has for decades been the industrialized world. Arguably, the greatest immediate danger to the global environment is not overpopulation, but careless overconsumption.