The Rainbow Warrior campaigns for the protection

Their core focus in India has been against toxic dumping. This practice is rampant in the ship-breaking industry, where ships come laden with toxic wastes.

“We’re not against the industry, as it does supply the country with a lot of steel, what we’re against is the way it’s done,” explains Nityanand Jairaman (who incidentally was the first person in India to be employed by Greenpeace when they started their operations.) “Though 60 percent of the content of these ships is useful, the remaining 40 percent is highly toxic,” protests Nityanand.

“Locally we work with unions of these ship-breakers, educating them about better health and safety and are working toward providing them with a safer work environment,” says Nityanand, “In these ship-breaking yards every third or fourth worker is afflicted with cancer.” Internationally Greenpeace is applying pressure on countries that have signed the Basil convention to decontaminate the ship at source before bringing it here.

Their first campaign was against a company called Bharat Zinc in Bhopal, which was illegally importing hazardous waste from Germany,” reveals Nityanand. Greenpeace investigated the company, and the findings triggered a ban by the Supreme Court on the import of toxic waste.

“With two years of constant monitoring we have exposed a lot of illegalities” states Nityanand, “though there is a general apathy toward the environment and how the human population is slowing destroying it. Many times we have been branded as being anti-development as a result of our various campaigns.”

Greenpeace is also striving for clean production. “We want no more Bhopals. In and around Mumbai, in places like Chembur there are industrial plants that spew toxic wastes into the environment,” states Nityanand.

Greenpeace International has been working in India for the past 5 years with the thought that if toxic dumping is not done in USA then it shouldn’t be allowed in India as well. They use a very famous acronym NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard – as the acronym suggests, it is a very familiar phenomenon with Indians – so as long the problem doesn’t occur in our immediate vicinity, the problem ceases to exist. This is not the solution, in fact it’s the problem. They propagate an alternate acronym, NOPE – Not On Planet Earth.

Greenpeace International has an official presence in 42 different countries around the world. In every country the operations are carried out by a very small core group of employees and volunteers. To meet the expenses of the various operations, Greenpeace recieves funds from around 4 million small supporters the world over. Greenpeace doesn’t accept any funding from corporations as it could sometimes be a bribe in disguise to look the other way, neither does it accept government funding `which again is a corporation in disguise.’

So what can a college student like you start doing to help the environment? If you are seriously concerned about the littering or non-friendliness toward the environment on the college campus, then here’s your chance to make a difference. Sign up with Campus Greens. As the name suggests, it’s a college organisation, which is inspired by Green Peace International.

Being a young organisation, conceived only in August this year, they are still evolving. They have only five or six active members as of now, but that is a number which is expected to grow exponentially. Being an action-oriented group, they organise various campaigns, which strive to make college campuses more eco-friendly. Currently they have received a small amount of success in colleges like St Xaviers, Sophia Polytechnic, Jai Hind and IIT-Powai. As a result of their campaigns the canteens of the colleges mentioned no longer use plastic cups to serve their beverages.

They’re even working on a process whereby they will be able to provide a `Green Rating’ to colleges based on how eco-friendly the campus really is.

They are also anti-disposables, like the use of aluminum cans for soft drinks, which are not recycled in India. Get this: the amount of energy used to produce one can can light up to 60 homes in a village.

Think about that one next time you have the urge to be cool!

Researched by Amish Mody