IIT Gandhinagar celebrated International Earth Day

Palaj: Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) community celebrated International Earth Day today. The Green Office at IITGN organized a number of activities to mark the day and give the message to ‘Save the Earth, Save the Environment’ collectively.

The celebrations included Eco talks on the topics such as “Go Waste Negative”, “Tree Walks, Issues of Urban Environment”, and “Use of Eco-Friendly Alternatives” by various organizations working towards environment conservation. A short film on green practices at IITGN campus was released on the occasion.

The event also had ‘Nature Bazaar’, an exhibition of various organic food products, vegetables, khadi clothing, environment friendly alternatives, compost, and books, among others. A group of rural women, trained in stitching by NEEV, a community outreach initiative of IITGN, had also put up a stall of cloth bags sewn by them, which served the dual purpose of saving the environment from plastic bags and empowering rural women through livelihood generation.

Prof Michel Danino, Visiting Professor, Humanities and Chairman, Green Office, IITGN, said, “The Institute celebrates Earth Day every year to sensitize its community — faculty, students, staff and their families — to the challenges the environment faces and what can be done to remedy them at the individual or collective levels. IITGN is one of the greenest campuses in India, with great emphasis on waste management, water harvesting and recycling, composting of vegetal waste, biogas and solar energy generation, to contribute towards nature conservation.”

The event received enthusiastic response from the entire IITGN community, including students, faculty, staff and their family members.

The campus of IITGN along the banks of the river Sabarmati near Palaj, Gandhinagar was planned as a green campus, and is the first campus to receive 5-star GRIHA LD rating in India for its various eco-friendly measures in both design and management of the campus.