Greenwish Foundation holds a tree plantation drive in which 80 lakh Beema bamboo saplings will be planted across the city. The foundation aims to make Chennai a carbon neutral metropolitan city by 2020.
The species has been chosen since it is said to control soil erosion and is a practical solution to reduce the carbon dioxide levels in the air in a short span of time. “Beema bamboo is a wonder plant as it takes only 24 months to grow. The tree can give out more than 280kg of oxygen every year, and in a span of five years, it can absorb around 500kg of carbon dioxide,” says N Bharti, Advisory member for the Governments of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Tripura, for Bamboo Development.
The team has 15 division heads for 200 different wards in the city, and the brand ambassadors of the foundation are seven-year-old Naisha Rajan, founder of Eradicate Hunger, and five-year-old Sai Vishruth, the initiator of #gogreen.
An application called Green Kalam was launched as part of the tree-planting drive. It will ensure that every tree gets a unique identification number and is tracked for its growth till 2020.
Chennai Corporation, Pollution Control Board and the Tamil Nadu Forest Department support the team in realising their vision.
Various NGOs across the city endorse the event and hope to bring back the green cover which was destroyed by cyclone Vardah.
All of them have a common vision: that Chennai becomes the good-old Singara Chennai with plenty of trees.
