A 92-year-old Mumbai man took action to transform his housing society with renewable energy and rainwater catches, saving the residents thousands.

In the year 2000, Navin Chandra moved into the Sealine Housing Society but was "appalled" to see how much money residents paid for the delivery of water from large tanker trucks.

Expensive and "not even clean" the truck water orders made no sense to Chandra considering that Mumbai lies right in the path of the mighty monsoon rains.

He convinced every member of the housing society to invest in a rainwater harvesting facility, solar panels, a windmill, and a composting pit, all in order to transform the unassuming apartment block into a hub of green civic-mindedness.

Part of Chandra's pitch was that the residents would recover their investment in a few years thanks to water and electricity savings, and by 2012 the community was in the green, financially speaking, thanks to nearly 200,000 liters of water (2 lakh) gathered up by their rainwater system every monsoon season.

"We have stopped purchasing tank water, and can even fulfill the water needs of our neighboring buildings," Chandra told The Better India. 

Chandra didn't stop at water bills but tackled the high electricity costs that also come along in the rainy season by installing solar panels and a wind turbine, providing the building with 50% of its electricity needs from nature.

Food scraps are composted on site which they use as fertilizer for the landscaping, including a rooftop garden.

In today's frenzy of climate activism, too many people focus on trying to change the world rather than first changing their own environments.

If there were a Navin Chandra for every homeowner's association, the world would look an awful lot more renewable than it does at the annual COP climate summits for example.

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