ITC breaks "Greening" world record!

ITC broke a Guiness record, when it coordinated the planting of, "3,00,587 saplings of eucalyptus and subabul in just 20 minutes in 264 acres spread across 17 different locations in and around Bhadrachalam on Monday". The previous record was for 134,000 saplings in one hour and was held by a Canadian agency.

Why did ITC plant all the saplings?

The effort was part of the "Sunfeast Hara Banao" campaign of the ITC foods division, and keeps in with ITC's long-term plan to encourage eucalyptus for the paper industry. In this case, the farmers planted the saplings and will take care of them. ITC will buy wood from them at market rates. Apparently the farmers should get about 2 lakhs an acre in the five years of the trees' growth. The effort cost ITC Rs 5,000,000.

In passing...

Tamil Nadu will build its second largest water desalination plant to overcome the water woes of the people of two municipalities. The proposed plant will supply 2.5 million litres per day, which is the total requirement of the 60,000 Ramanathapuram municipality. The entire supply will be shared between two municipalities however, at it supplements the existing water supply.

I am not sure how economical desalination plants are however, and if they are competitive to other sources, why cant we have more of them?