Green Action Week 2020 – Sharing Community

Green Action Week (GAW), observed each year during the first week of October, is a global people’s campaign to promote sustainable consumption. Around 50 organisations in 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, North- and South America are participating in the campaign in 2020. Green Action Week is an initiative by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) and is carried out in India coordinated by CUTS International.

“Sharing Community” is the theme for the campaign in 2020. Since 2018, campaign has focused on encouraging cultures of sharing and collaboration. This year campaign will discuss and implement ways that can bring more equal and sustainable access to goods and services for the befit of the people and the planet, through sharing and collaboration.

“This year’s campaign is positioned in the context of the pandemic, which has severe negative impact on sustainable consumption. The pandemic had resulted in tremendous increase in plastic consumption; single-use plastic has made a big comeback in India due to increased use of masks, gloves, face shields, PPE kits, sanitizer bottles etc. The plastic waste is expected to be 9.4 million tons in 2020. Since work and education had gone online, use of electronic gadgets increased tremulously, sale of laptops in the state of Kerala itself increased by 400 percent and in Rajasthan increased by 200 percent. It is estimated that India will generate 5.2 million tons of e-waste by 2021. Use of personal vehicles, due to lack of public transport and physical distancing norms, increased to more than the pre pandemic levels. There is 70-80% increase in the production and consumption of organic products, as consumers consider immunity as ammunition to fight the virus. This year the campaign will focus on addressing some of these issues.

CUTS International is partnering and supporting organizations in 11 Districts of Rajasthan states, for conducting GAW campaign. The partnering Districts are: Banswara, Bhilwara, Chittorgarh, Dausa, Kota, Jhalawar, Jodhpur, Pratapgarh, Sawai Madhopur, and Udaipur in addition to Jaipur. This will help in creating a network of organisations working on sustainable consumption and strengthen the collective advocacy for rebuilding recovery plans that will reverse current trends and change the consumption patterns towards more sustainable future.

Under the campaign, in the city of Jaipur Consumers would be trained to imbibe the habit of sharing and 100 kitchen gardens would be developed in four different communities of Jaipur. A ‘Wall of Kindness’ will be set up in each community where people can put their used and unused household items like clothes, Crockery items, books etc. to share with other community members.

 

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