NaiDunia celebrates 64th Anniversary in an environment friendly way

Coinciding with the World Environment Day, NaiDunia has been celebrating its Anniversary with an environmental theme year-on-year. In the past, too, NaiDunia has been adopting successful thematic campaigns. While ‘Tham Lo Paani’ propagated water conservation and installation of rain water harvesting systems, ‘Tham Lo Hariyali’ focused on plantation and distribution of free saplings across seven units in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi-NCR.

This year, on completion of 64 years of publication, NaiDunia has appealed to the people, saying: ‘Apne Haathon mein Tham Lo Hariyali’ (Go Green, say No to Polythene). With this theme, NaiDunia is promoting usage of eco-friendly paper bags instead of polythene bags. Five lakh bags are being made in two different sizes and are being distributed to shoppers through various retails outlets, road side vendors, public transport, hangouts and malls in Indore, Bhopal, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Raipur and Bilaspur from June 5, 2011. The activity shall go on for 10 days.

On the thought process behind this initiative, Vinay Chhajlani, CEO, NaiDunia Media, explained, “Polythene bags have become a menace for the environment and public health. Everybody knows it. Still, there’s no stopping to it. Despite a ban on sale and use of below standard polythene bags, one can get them everywhere. Unfortunately, civil authorities do not seem to be perturbed on this issue. Therefore, we thought of this initiative. Public has always whole-heartedly supported each of our initiatives related to environmental concerns. In fact, we have been able to move several NGOs, social organisations and Municipal Corporations to take our initiatives further. This time too, we believe, we can spark off a trend of using paper bags.”

“This CSR initiative is being promoted through a print campaign, radio and on ground activities,” informed Vineet Sethia, Director, NaiDunia Media.

Besides this CSR initiative, NaiDunia has also launched few Reader Connect print and promotional activities. Debu Mishra, President (S&D), said, “We are inviting people turning 64 this month to share their experiences with our readers, as they have witnessed the world, the society evolve over these years. We shall publish select articles in the newspaper. Also, we invited our readers to call up our office on June 5 if they have ‘64’ in their mobile number, ATM card, house number, vehicle number, etc. They were rewarded with a goodwill gift. This is our way of saying ‘thank you’.”