EQ: The Quint’s Environment Newsletter, Build Your Green Quotient

EQ: The Quint’s green newsletter. Read about climate change, alternate energy, raise your environment quotient

E-India

• Death by air pollution – A new report says that over 6.5 lakh Indians are killed prematurely every year by outdoor air pollution. This makes India the country with the second highest number of such deaths. China holds the top spot.

• Tulsi genome decoded by Indian scientists! Long considered a wonder plant in India, the tulsi’s gene sequence is expected to help in the development of new medicines.
• Are we regulating our coastal areas properly? A new report highlights issues with the way projects are being cleared in India’s ecologically sensitive coastal zones.

E-Mage

• Should we be(e) worried? One third of the food we consume is pollinated by bees and worryingly for us, they’re vanishing at an alarming rate.

E-Video

• Watch an incredible video of scientists swimming with the world’s largest fish – the whale shark.

E-Stat

• 100 percent: The area of Antarctica that might melt if we burnt all available fossil fuels
• 160 – 200 feet: The rise in global sea levels if all of Antarctica melts

E-International

• Hot, Hotter, Hottest! 2014 is the current warmest year since records started being kept in 1880 and 2015 is 97 percent set to beat that record. Scientists blame man-made global warming and the El Nino effect for the rising temperatures.

E-Renewable Energy

• Clean energy is good for business too! Rising power costs and environmental concerns have pushed the Indian Railways and telecom tower operators to slowly add more renewable energy to their power mix.

E-Waste

• Sugar beet waste to ‘billion dollar wonder material’? Scottish scientists have developed a new material from sugar beet waste which is stronger than carbon fibre and could one day even be used to make aircraft wings.

E-Nature

• Plenty of fish in the sea? Not any more. A new WWF study has reported that ocean fish populations are on “the brink of collapse” – and their numbers have plunged by 50 percent since 1970. Over-fishing, pollution and climate change are some of the main reasons for this sharp decline and the WWF Director-General has commented that “the ocean is resilient but there is a limit”.

E-Innovation

• What if you could drink from your water bottle…..and then eat it? The new edible packaging is biodegradable and made from seaweed. We drink an astonishing 233 billion litres of bottled water each year and innovations like this are critical to reducing the plastic currently choking up our landfills.

E-Case

• Celebrate festivals the eco-friendly way! The NGT has ordered that only bio-degradable Ganesha idols which are painted with eco-friendly colours with can be immersed in the river.

E-Quiz

• Which state in India has the maximum area under forests?

(a) Arunachal Pradesh
(b) Uttarakhand
(c) Madhya Pradesh
(d) Kerala
(Shalini Iyengar is a lawyer and researcher working in India)