Komal Singh is an activist for Sustainable Living who spreads awareness about the same through social media posts. She posts content on gardening, low-waste living, and vegan recipes. Komal Singh believes that humans can give back to the environment by spending some time during the day, and growing and nurturing plants and flowers.
Komal Singh also educates people about composting and how to reduce food waste. In her conversation with Icy Tales, she highlighted the importance of sustainable living, her opinion on pollution in the country, and some tips to reduce food waste.
Q) What is the importance of having sustainable living in today’s world?
Komal Singh: We all are aware of the climate change that’s going on and we all know that there are so many factors that have changed in the last few decades. So I believe that sustainable living is no more a choice; it is the only option that we must adapt to. We need to adopt a lifestyle that can be adopted by everyone in a very easy way.
So that was the point of starting my Instagram channel and sharing that you don’t have to go to the mountains or anything to live sustainably. We can start by taking very small actions and it can be as easy as you would think. We all need to adapt to living a sustainable life because if we don’t make the best of it, even our future generation will not take it seriously.
Q) You posted a lot of gardening videos. So how did you get this idea to document all this and how did all this begin?
Komal Singh: Sustainability can be as simple as composting their kitchen waste. 50 to 60% of the waste that you don’t generate in a daily business is kitchen waste. Let’s talk about the lifecycle of that kitchen waste. We throw them in the dustbin and at times some of them are put up in dustbins without any segregation.
They are just taken and dumped in the landfill and keep piling up daily. So what happens is that because kitchen waste compostable, it starts getting decomposed. Eventually, we don’t have the oxygen supply in the landfill because it’s just compressed so that we can create more space to put more waste over there.
In that process, it releases methane, which is a greenhouse gas; a very harmful. So indirectly, 50% of our kitchen waste is harming the environment. These can be utilized to create compost which can add nutrition to the soil. We must have seen our ancestors who buried kitchen waste, food, chili, beans, and everything, in the soil that used to enrich the soil.
This was so simple that I thought, why not utilize social media? Gardening is very easy for everyone to adopt. So, on my Instagram, I started showing how kitchen waste can be utilized in your garden while also growing vegetables, flowers, and plants that you see around; that was my motive.
Q) Pollution is rising and it is a threat to all of us. In cities like Delhi, pollution is reaching new heights and affecting the daily routine of people. What do you have to say about this?
Komal Singh: In Delhi, there are a lot of factors contributing to this air pollution but I would not like to go into details about those factors because, we will start playing the blame game like the government is not taking action, etc. Let’s talk about some of the very simple steps we can take, apart from blaming the government, because that is not the solution to that problem.
Firstly, if every household starts composting, that kitchen waste will be able to tremendously reduce the amount of air pollution that’s happening. The second would be segregating; of course, that is one thing we all can do without any problem. And thirdly, growing more trees.
People ask me how they can ensure that they are growing trees in the right place. The simplest would be that grow plants at your home, maybe on your balcony or outdoors. Just imagine if every house has just five plants, then each building has close to 300 plants.
Apart from this, other ways to beat pollution would be to use public transport because it is convenient and viable for everyone in every city. We all can also try to carpool and reduce air pollution as much as possible, in this way. So let’s take one act and one action at a time and I am sure it will have some impact on Delhi’s Pollution.
Q) Deforestation is increasing day after day. Tell us the importance of Afforestation and the importance of growing trees.
Komal Singh: I think I don’t need to explain this in detail because I am sure everyone knows the importance of growing trees. I’d also like to talk about how we can do that because I am trying to do this in my locality here in Bangalore. I faced so many challenges as to where I should grow trees because it is an important task to find a good spot.
Then, I started talking to the gardener of my society. After that, we planted close to 70 mango and papaya trees in our society. Apart from this, there are so many tree plantation drives and NGOs taking action on afforestation. So we can contribute some amount to them so that they can grow more trees and we are also contributing little.
That’s why I always say that if you can’t grow trees by yourself, you can cooperate and collaborate with some NGOs and you have your contribution. There is a lot of acceleration as we are exponentially able to restore the kinds of deforestation that we have already been a part of. So those are the three easiest ways that we can do; especially NGO collaboration is the easiest.
Instead of throwing away the seeds of fruits that we eat, we can just sprout those seeds; it is very easy, I have also posted a video on my channel regarding this. It’s very simple to take action because this is such a great motivation. You are inhaling air daily but the quality of air is so poor to an extent that it is equivalent to smoking cigarettes. I feel like this itself will give you a push to work for the best in the future.
Q) What is your favorite part about growing plants and flowers?
Komal Singh: I started composting my kitchen waste and when I saw it blooming in front of my eyes, it gave me so much pleasure and happiness. Just seeing that growth which came from something very small gave me so much motivation to keep going.
The happiness and satisfaction you get from gardening are beyond words. There was a time when gardening and growing plants took me out of depression as well. So by investing just 30 minutes daily, I got so much joy and happiness. I love sitting and getting excited just by admiring the beautiful flowers and fruits.
I have also started growing vegetables and my small balcony so it has become like a meditation for me to just patiently watch my plants bloom. My day’s happiness and pleasures come from gardening and of course, it also helps in reducing air pollution in the world.
Komal Singh has close to 100 plants on her balcony and she loves nurturing and taking care of them. She urges people to grow plants and make this world a healthier place to live in.
Check out the whole conversation with Komal Singh on our YouTube Channel.
Last Updated on by Sathi
