An envoy of sustainability

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Gaurav Maheshwari, a 21-year-old student of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) is gearing up to represent India at the Bayer Young Environmental Envoy (BYEE 2012) programme in Germany next month.

Chosen as a national winner of the competition together with Swapnil Kokate of the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, the environmental project of the IITian aims to provide decentralised wastewater treatment facilities to rural areas. “Phycoremediation is an algal treatment of water which improves water quality, while the end product of biomass can be used as a fertiliser and for biofuels,” says this fourth year student of the M.Tech dual degree programme.
Having dabbled in chemicals for years, Maheshwari is enjoying his stint with environment, an area where he believes much has to be done technologically and at the grassroots level. “Ensuring environment sustainability is the seventh Millennium Development Goal (MDG) the world has to achieve by 2015,” he says.
The Indian team along with 48 winners from other countries will travel to Ger-many on a weeklong study tour. “This entails visits to waste management and recycling sites, as well as workshops on nature monitoring and conservation,” he says.