Introducing solar power on the campus and planting trees are all part of the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research’s plans to green their campus. The campaign was started on Monday, which was observed as Earth Day.
On Monday, saplings were planted on the JIPMER campus to mark the start of their tree-planting campaign in three areas – the guest house, employees’ homes and the hostels. The idea is to plant 2013 trees by the end of 2013, Director of JIPMER T.S. Ravikumar told The-Hindu .
Once the campaign is kick-started, they have planned different occasions to continue the tree plantation. The tree-plantation drive is to be continued by having employees plant saplings on their birthdays. In this way, it is a continuous plantation drive, rather than planting a large number of trees at once and then forgetting about them.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Another thing that we are planning to do is to name the trees after the employees. In this way, they will feel a personal connect to the trees and will take care of them,” he said.
Once that is done, the people on the campus will all be divided into different teams and will be allotted a certain area to keep clean and green. The team that has the best-maintained area will then be given 1000 square feet of land that they can use as a vegetable garden to take care of their needs.
At present, they were only sticking to indigenous trees, including the neem, pongam, gulmohar, rosewood and teak varieties.
ADVERTISEMENT
Solar power
JIPMER has now received an in-kind donation of Rs. 50 lakh from an alumnus donor, towards the installation of solar power to augment the power supply from the grid, he said.
Initially, they were starting with the rooftops in the School of Nursing, where they would use solar power as the main source and when it falls fell short, they would use power from the grid. Soon, they were planning to expand the solar power usage to the casualty as well.
In the future, JIPMER was planning to make certain areas a carbon emission-free zone, where cars and two wheelers would not be allowed. This plan would take some time to implement, however, he said.