OREANDA-NEWS. March 29, 2012. Sustainability at Tata Power forms the core of its vision to make a difference and remain committed to the issues of resource conservation, energy efficiency, environment protection and enrichment of its communities.As part of its endeavour of powering a greener world, Tata Power, India’s largest integrated power company, launched a unique initiative called ‘Greenolution’to help its  employees and other key stakeholders traverse the journey and make green living their ‘way of living’.

This green movement has gained significant momentum with its employees, leading to the creation of a unique, green innovation called ‘Solar Bottle bulb’ by the employees from its Power House 6 plant, thus providing free lighting by using plastic bottles. This green idea of utilisation of solar energy will now be proliferated in other locations of the company.

“This idea has been tried in our Power House 6 plant and found worth adopting.  The solar light bottle is fitted in the alum store of effluent treatment plant.  We found it is efficiently illuminating the pitch dark store room without use of any electricity. The luminance produced by the solar bottle is good for comfortable visibility. The light is cool in nature,” said Pradip Biswas, lead innovator from Power House 6 plant, Jamshedpur.

Solar bottle lamps or ’Solar Bottle Bulbs’ were first developed in Brazil and have quickly become popular in other countries. This is a grassroots level innovative idea  to light up houses during the day using plastic bottles (waste soft drink bottles) filled with water and a bit of bleach. The bottles concentrate and transport sunlight generating light equivalent to a 40-60watt light bulb. Light bottles fit into custom-cut holes in a roof. Plastic bottles refract the sun's rays, scattering about 55watts of light across a dark room. The bleach is to avoid any microbial growth in the water bottle.  This lighting source can be installed with less effort, and lasts for almost five years. This initiative has zero maintenance and cost and also supports the ‘best out of waste’ philosophy.

The name Greenolution is a fusion of two concepts – ‘Green’ and ‘Evolution’ — which signifies the processes and initiatives that Tata Power has undertaken or will undertake towards ensuring a greener and sustainable planet. The key programmes being pursued under Greenolution are:

Implementation of 100 percent recycled paper usage in office.

Tree plantation at all plants and site locations.

Saving water at plants, and office and site locations.

Saving fuel through carpooling and other initiatives.

Waste management at offices.

Energy conservation and efficiency initiatives at all locations and outside.

Reducing air travel and using webcast / video conferencing facilities.

Participation in ‘Clean your city’ drives and campaign.

The company also encourages its employees to ‘map and measure’ their individual carbon footprint through a ‘carbon footprint calculator’, and reduce it. Going forward through the brand name Greenolution, Tata Power intends to put efforts / practices / programmes that infuse the belief of sustainability as a ‘movement’ by making all stakeholders a part of it.