B'lore seed ball campaign gets rolling

B'lore seed ball campaign gets rolling
CNN IBN

Bangalore: It just takes one seed to set the ball rolling — that's the idea behind the seed ball campaign started by a Bangalore-based NGO, Alt Tech Foundation, to clean the city's air.

"The seed ball campaign has been created for the citizens of Bangalore, who will be able to help the re-forestation that we are all trying to do. It's very simple and everyone can be part of the campaign,” Alt Tech Foundation, Vinay Nair said.

The campaign was launched on June 5, World Environment Day, with corporate houses, schools and citizens eagerly participating in the programme.

Indigenous varieties like neem, honge and sampige are some of the seeds chosen and though it was a serious campaign, making the seed balls was anything but that.

"It really feels nice. I've always been passionate about playing with mud and trees,” Zonal Head, HDFC Bank, Santosh said.

At Re 1 a seed, it wasn't difficult to get people to participate. And the numbers on their website are proof of that. Once the seed balls are made, they will be collected and sorted according to the tree variety and distributed at the village level.

The villagers will then be employed in scattering the seed balls towards the end of this month when the monsoon sets in.

"Seed scattering is happening at the rural end where we are trying to bridge the urban-rural divide. Seven million Bangaloreans, 1.2 billion Indians, one seed ball per person the numbers can be phenomenal,” Nair said.

And if Bangalore indeed manages to make one million seed balls it could well be a world record.

So, when was the last time you got your hands dirty with clay? Well, this time you can relive your childhood memories and work for a cause as well.

One seed ball among the millions can make Bangalore breathe easy once again.