A Boy on a bicycle

A BOY ON A BICYCLE

Some coincidences scare you, some you cherish and some give you food for thought.

It was the Sunday morning; that day I got us unusually early. The morning was cloudy, vivacious and very picturesque. It was drizzling and the street light was still on. At the corner of the street General merchant shop was already open. I waved my hand to say hi to the Aunty; in reply she waved her hand.

I looked up in the sky as my habit to start the day with “Survya Namaskar”.

Sun was playing hide and seek in the clouds and combinations of dark and bright clouds were making amazing shapes in the sky. Looked as if every thing was going creative, but one approaching cloudy figure was grabbing my attention. It was something like “like A BOY ON A BICYCLE”, I could clearly imagine bicycle, its’ wheels, Handle and a boy with long hair flirting with the guest of the wind, Calm –serene look and paddling bicycle gently.

I was absorbed in figuring out the complexion of the boy, and then suddenly I herd the sound “Sir Jee”. My eyes widened and I couldn’t control my amazement,

But again the same voice came, “Sir Look down, don’t up. Is Having Raddi, Waste Paper”.

(I looked down) My eyes widened even more, unbelievable, unrealistic, looked to me as if some one had given shape to my imagination.

I just nodded with out shifting my glance away from him. He was wearing school uniform and most probably would be in 6th or 7th standard.

He came up and I pointed towards the pile of waste papers; he went in and started arranging waste papers. Waste was containing news papers, used note books, lot of printed papers and some only one side printed paper (As I don’t like reading through computer so I am used to take prints of things which I have to read).

I was watching him intently and I observed the phase shift in his look from the cheering look to the concerned look, smile was gone and he murmured in the some what choked voice,

“Sir Jee so much for the myth, that computer would eliminate the need for paper. But the fact is lot of times people unintentionally run off countless sheets of paper on their printer that are "wasted."

Lot of things can be done to kill Paper Waste instead of Trees?

I immediately realized what he was pointing at. I asked like….

On that he replied, Like-----

1. Buy and Use recycled Paper,
According to study a ton of paper made from recycled paper, as opposed to virgin paper, saves the equivalent of 4,100 kilowatt hours of energy, 7000 gallons of water, 60 pounds of air emissions, and 3 cubic yards of landfill space.

2. Check Your Work to Avoid Printing Copies that Have to Be Thrown Away
Make sure to spell check your work, even read over it on screen, and see Print Preview to make sure everything lines up correctly.

3. Use the Print Range feature to Print only what You Need means to print only the exact pages or the selected text that you need.

4. Make Use of Double Sided Printing.

5. Avoid Printed Envelope Labels better Print Directly on to the Envelope,

6. Send Documents via E-mail or E-fax, with E-fax you don’t have to print something out just to stick in the fax machine and then throw it away when you’re done.

7. Don’t Throw Away Your Miss-prints. Keep it as Draft Papers and print on the blank side instead of throwing it and even you can use it to jot down notes for yourself instead of throwing...

It is just a small step to reduce our feelings of guilt of waste and our bit to save environment.

And finally he stopped talking; I was still having a feeling as he is addressing me. I wanted to know more about him and asked lot of simple questions but he finally told Sir Jee total 15KG and gave me the 90Rs.

“What! It almost covered half of my room and you are telling 15 KG”, that was what I wanted to say but didn’t after seeing his stern look.

He picked up his bicycle and disappeared some where in the corner of the street.

I looked up even the cloudy figure was gone; I was only able to sense some thing at zenith similar to the Raddi Wala boy.

His words were pinching me hard; I thought over and realized that I really need to do my bit for the environment.

As I was leading the social chapter of Schneider electric “LULI”, I put across the idea and we paved the foundation of “Save Paper campaign”.

We made posters to make people aware how they can contribute in saving environment.

In a design company it is really difficult to review drawings on computer and most of time printing is unavoidable that too one sided so our main agenda was to find a proper solution to utilize the one side printed papers.

As people appreciated the idea but still we observed lot of usable waste papers, so we thought better replace the note books with spiral bindings made up of waste papers.

New Challenges were to get the approval from the higher management regarding the procurement of Spiral binding machine and other necessary equipments, then to set up the process of collecting papers and making note books, and finally who will do the work.

We did our ground work and following were the findings.

• As per the Existing process: All the printed papers go to the shredder irrespective whether utilization is possible or not.
• Proposed process was to make spiral note books out of the printed papers, reuse the spirals and cover sheet for the next lot and then send the utilized papers to the shredder.
• As per statistics we were wasting 7500 effective A4 size papers per day and out of that 75 spiral note books each containing 100 pages can be made though the daily consumption of notebooks was 60.
• One time expenditure to install the heavy duty spiral machine was Rs 18,350
• Monthly saving due to elimination of note books were Rs. 22,500 and Yearly 2, 70,000.

Figures were startling and no one has dreamed such outcomes, got immediate approval and soon the process will take shape.

Now in a cloudy day, I always look up in the sky to get the glimpse of THAT BOY ON A BICYCLE

To say --------THANKS