The National Green Tribunal (West) has taken cognizance of the issue of discharge of human waste from rail coaches directly onto the tracks. The issue was brought before the Tribunal in the form of an Environment Interest Litigation (EIL) filed by Sahyog Trust, a NGO based out of Pune. The Railway Ministry has been asked to file a reply to and be present before the tribunal on October 1.

 

 

Germany has agreed to help rejuvenate a stretch of the Ganga flowing through Uttarakhand based on the technology it had used to clean up the Rhine back home. This was finalized during the bilateral meeting of the Foreign Ministers of both the countries in Berlin in late August.

 

 

102-year-old Kuwarbai Yadav has undertaken a door to door campaign for better hygiene and sanitation practices in Kotabharri village in Dhamtari district of Chattisgarh. After the centenarian sold off her goats to construct a toilet for herself and urged others to build them as well, the entire village came forward and pledged to make the village an ‘open defecation free’ zone.

 

 

National Sanitation Rating Initiative executed in collaboration with the Union HRD Ministry has revealed that over 50 percent of CBSE schools including the Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV) in Tamil Nadu have abysmally low sanitation facilities. Only two KVs in the entire state managed to secure the ‘Green’ tag with an adherence rate 91-100 percent.

 

 

The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation has handed over identity cards to over 400 waste pickers working within the limits of the civic body. All of them are members of the ‘Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat’, an organisation that works for the rights of waste pickers and itinerant scrap buyers.

 

 

With close to 41 million individuals defecating out in the open, the Maharashtra government has set a three year target to make all of its 265 cities open defecation free (ODF). October 2, 2015 has been set as the target to declare 50 cities as ‘ODF’.