Bodeli government office goes green!

Vadodara: Until a month ago, the mundane walls of this government office building were merely part of the infrastructure, not worth a glance. But that’s an old tale. Today, you wouldn’t recognize Bodeli taluka seva sadan office with its new glam entrance that has also become a textbook example for best out of waste.
The ungainly notices and government scheme posters have been replaced by a beautiful vertical garden, thanks to the initiative of government staffers of the taluka.
The initiative to beautify the walls was part of the World Environment Day celebration plans. “By creating this vertical garden at the entrance of the building, we wanted to send across a message that environment can also be conserved by recycling waste at low cost,” said deputy collector Mayur Parmar.
The district administration officials first approached professionals to create the vertical garden. But when they gave an estimate of Rs 1.5 lakh, the officials of the taluka seva sadan decided to do it themselves.
Parmar said that the staffers went around several scrap dealers in the tribal-dominated district but were unable to procure 350 PET bottles of the same colour. They then searched scrap dealers in Vadodara and could manage to accumulate same colour bottles in huge numbers. “A local fabrication workshop was asked to create iron frames for these bottles and 350 saplings were also bought from local nurseries,” he said, adding that the entire project costed them a meagre Rs 4,000 only. “The iron frames incurred majority of the expenses, otherwise the cost would have been even less than what we spent,” Parmar told TOI.
Banners have also been placed alongside the vertical garden to instil awareness about reducing waste through recycle and reuse method.