In March this year, Kamal Meattle, chief executive of Paharpur Business Centre made a presentation at the hugely-popular TEDTalks (TED standing for Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in the US. At the forum, where the list of speakers includes Bill Gates and Al Gore, and only a select few are invited every year to speak about “ideas worth spreading”, Meattle delivered an interesting speech on how an arrangement of three common houseplants could result in measurably cleaner indoor air.
The results are there for anyone to see, at his office park, right in the heart of Delhi. It all started about 17 years ago when Meattle became allergic to Delhi’s air. His doctors told him that his lung capacity had gone down to 70% and that the city’s polluted air was killing him. Not willing to leave the city, the MIT alum looked around for options. He enlisted the help of The Energy and Resources Institute and IIT, and used research findings from NASA to figure out that three commonly-available green plants could be used to grow all the fresh air we need indoors to remain healthy.
Meattle put this experiment into practice at his “office hotel”, which he had started in 1990 at Nehru Place - a commercial hub in Delhi. Over the years, he built an island of green in the midst of the old buildings. The top floor of the multi-storeyed building was converted into a greenhouse, nearly 1,200 green plants were placed strategically across floors, and a natural air purifying system was set up.
The results have been amazing: there is a huge difference in the quality of air inside PBC and that outside. This has been proven through various reports and tests conducted by government agencies and international certifications. “Productivity goes up by more than 20% for people who work in PBC due to increased levels of oxygen in the blood. Common ailments, such as headaches, eye irritation and asthma are significantly down,” says the man behind the unique experiment.
Most importantly, says Meattle, “we serve as a model not only for the city but for the world at large. People visit us all the time to see how we’ve maintained one of the healthiest buildings in the city”. The PBC experiment with green plants has been replicated by many foreign residents, industrialists, and by the state government at the Delhi Secretariat.
“We save up to Rs 3,000 per hour on electricity bill and millions of litres of water every year,” says Meattle, whose Rs 20-crore business recycles everything it can, from soap-free water to leftover food.
Environment has always been a passion for Meattle. In 1983, he started the Save the Tree organisation to stop the felling of trees in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. “We went to schools and targeted children to spread our message,” says Meattle, according to whom nearly two acres of trees were being chopped to make boxes for every one acre of apples being harvested. So he looked up designs from New Zealand manufacturers, and came up with a sturdier, recyclable box for the apples. The corrugated boxes were such a hit that they are now being used for other fruits, such as cherries, as well.
Next, Meattle set his sights on Delhi’s air pollution. “We surveyed more than 300,000 two-wheeler operators and found out that not only were they using the wrong engine oil, they were using too much of it, causing the benzene content in Delhi’s air to go up to 5%.” So he did what he usually does: he filed a public-interest-litigation suit. It went on to become one of the two PILs that led the Supreme Court of India to order oil companies to set up special pumps with a premix of oil and gas, which were less polluting. “I did this, despite knowing that it would hurt my flexible-packaging business, which made recyclable pouches for packaging lubricants,” says he. The business did get hurt, but Meattle prefers to think about the 229 tonnes of oil that was saved.
That’s Meattle’s modus operandi. “I believe in getting the job done. I employ ways that use the least amount of time and energy to get the maximum impact. I use my personal networks judiciously. Most important, I’m persistent. I keep at the task till people get fed up and finally give in,” says he, who’s received threat letters as well in response to some of his initiatives.
Next on his agenda is getting a ban on transfats. He didn’t think twice before asking Indra Nooyi, the global CEO of Pepsi, if she knew what happened to the oil used for frying the potato chips sold by her company. He’s as likely to pin anyone across the table with his: “What do you do with the oil after you’ve fried the pakoras?” If you have no clue, then be prepared to get a earful about damaging the Yamuna and poisoning people. He’ll even tell you what he thinks we should do with our burnt oil - put it into barrels and send it to Chicago. “The Chicago Stock Exchange trades this ‘yellow grease’. Maybe, we could earn some foreign exchange,” he says, with a straight face.
As always, he has the last laugh.
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