About BCIL Alt Tech Foundation
The BCIL Alt.Tech Foundation has been involved with issues concerning water and energy for over a decade now. We've come to realize that if we have to survive in this planet, there is lot more than water and energy we have to address if we have to sustain this civilization....
The thrust in all our programmes will remain on water and energy, the two resources that the world will soon run out of, if a greater awareness of their importance is not built in people's minds.
Our thrust in Urban areas include:
1. To enable, educate and assist urban people to become energy conscious individuals using energy efficient appliances and processes.
2. To design energy saving devices.
3. To enable promotion of such devices in mainstream.
4. To create community–based stewardship of land areas in ways that we can save our threatened biodiversity of culture, traditions, plants and animal species.
5. Green spaces: To develop Green Spaces and Ecosystems that will renew soils and prevent erosion, purify our air and water, harness energy from green renewable resources and help regulate climate.
Some other action items of the Foundation include:
1. Raise our understanding of an ecosystem's biodiversity and the threats facing it.
2. Focus on the creation of working models of 'analog' forests which over 40-60 years will mature into a natural forest range.
3. Enable easy learning by children and urban Indians who have never learnt what it is to co-exist with the wild.
4. Sensitise people with lively programmes that subtly strengthen their perception of life around them and their place on Earth.
5. Create Biodiversity Registers and Red Lists of Endangered species in ecosystems and assist in their conservation.
6. Refine our understanding of land regeneration processes with soil and water conservation programmes.
7. Create major tree nurseries with intensive planting. Select species for such traits as drought resistance, rapid growth, capacity for soil anchoring and enrichment and the ability to sustain themselves naturally in the long term.
8. Convert farmers and women in the hills to viable but more ecologically sustainable livelihoods, such as eco-tourism, cultivation of medicinal plants, and so on.
9. Documentation and archiving of traditional practices and knowledge systems for use by other groups and by posterity.
Enabled, Not Helped
Processes need to be designed with a completely different set of technologies for managing—specially, water, energy and health. Skills and resources need to be generated to make them a reality.
In essence, what the Alt.Tech Foundation seeks is change—not mere improvement.
Our Partners
Many institutions have partnered this rough trail with the Alt.Tech Foundation. Architects, water managers, energy analysts, climatologists, civil engineers, and plain concerned citizens.
Our Scorecard
The Alt.Tech Foundation’s core professionals have undertaken several projects over five years in urban ecosystems in Bangalore, in the rainforest bowls of Coorg and in Dehradun. Here is an indicative list. Your browser may not support display of this image.
Energy
1. Alternate systems for local generation of power from renewable energy sources.
2. Practical Implementation of systems using geothermal passive cooling
3. Practical Implementation of systems using heat recovery mechanisms
4. Introduction of solarised pumps, solar lighting, LEDs and CFLs in urban buildings
5. Introduction of smart energy efficient systems that conserve energy
6. Introduction of water meters, power conscious meters in urban houses
Water
1. Implementation of waste water management systems with use of Biogas Digesters, aquatic weeds, french distribution channels, and other low maintenance devices in residential colonies.
Environmental Engineering Technologies
1. Devising of systems that enhance reuse of waste in every form. In Bangalore.
2. Promoting building materials that are resource-sensitive.
3. Enhancing performance value of such materials and mainstreaming their use on larger scale.
Education on Environmental Impact
1. Promotion and dissemination of information on energy efficiency among literate urbans and educated rural people.
2. Creation and publication of literature that will sensitize households to use of renewable energy and energy efficient systems.
3. Sensitising people in water management.
4. Sensitising people in solid waste management.
5. Compiling information on medicinal plants and herbs and on optimal growth conditions in mountain environments.
6. Promoting young talent in task applications in areas of integrated water and energy management.
7. Devising of a spectrum of techniques for effective management of such natural resources.
8. Creation of Registers of Biodiversity, of surviving indigenous species in urban and suburban scapes.
9. Awareness programmes that excite young minds to nurture a relationship with the wild.
10. Creation of programmes for spreading suburban wilderness.
11. Development of fertilizer-free urban agriculture and waste management practices.
Biomass Planning
1. Afforestation in the Kopatti Valley of the Coorg Watershed in Karnataka.
2. Selection and planting of appropriate range of species that will help to increase vegetation density of the microregion.
3. Ecological landscaping with select indigenous and other species with the primary aim of strengthening ground water retention and eliminating soil erosion.
Repositories of Biodiversity
The Alt.Tech Foundation has also chosen to work in areas that are repositories of culture and biodiversity; that have not been ravaged by the march of urban development over the last couple of centuries which have seen the worst of environmental degradation.
Community values, cultures and habitats in some identified rural ecosystems have remained relatively protected and preserved owing to their inaccessibility until the 20th century. That gives us the chance to understand and preserve what is left of our natural resources, and show the way for those who wish to take up the challenge.
Core Value
We are driven by a simple belief: The fate of our planet lies with us, the present generation. We have the ability to save it or sink it. The choice is ours.
There are enough numbers of people such as you, who are, and will be, willing to support and encourage this long–term effort. Our only reward is: future generations, our children, can inherit an earth which will have efficient processes in place that preserve, conserve and provide good health to this planet.
BCIL Alt. Tech. Foundation is a registered Not-for-profit trust.
