After leaving his IT job, a man from Mangaluru started greening city parks, growing food forests, and saving trees destined for the chop.

Describing his former office life as depressing, Mr. Jeeth Milan Roche was so energized by the tree planting that he took on the task of greening an infamous landfill where the stench was so bad it was driving people from their homes.

Every year around the time of the climate change panel meeting, news headlines become saturated with talk of environmental action on a global scale. But most people aren't hardwired to think globally.

Yet, we can create impact locally that ripples throughout the environment-as Jeeth did when he started planting saplings in a park near his old IT job.

"I simply started to get out of my depression, and to date, I haven't stopped," the 48-year-old told The Better India. "I plant trees everywhere! If you ask me the strangest place, I would say the cemetery. I visit cemeteries of all religions and have planted trees in over 23 of them. I plant 12,000 trees in Mangaluru every year."

He founded the Mangaluru Green Brigade in 2020 to pursue all kinds of tree-planting projects.

Jeeth lives in the city of Mangaluru (formerly Mangalore) in the Indian state of Karnataka located in the southwest tip of the subcontinent. One of the richest Indian states, economically and culturally, Karnataka is also the home of one of India's notorious dumping grounds called Pachanady.

At 42 acres, Pachanady had grown so fetid with trash that it was poisoning the environment; it simply wasn't a livable neighborhood anymore.

After planting trees in cemeteries, parks, and other places, Jeeth figured that a bit of greenery could turn the situation in Pachanady around, so he got to work planting the most fragrant trees he could find wherever it was possible to grow them.

He planted 3,074 saplings of teakwood, rosewood, banyan, fig, and peepal trees (more famously known as the Bodhi tree) with the help of his son and friends,

"Pacchanady was the most challenging site for us. We have not planted saplings of any commercial species," he told Times of India. "Instead, we have chosen only medicinal plants and fruit-bearing trees that will help people and birds."

He was able to create a buffer zone about 8 trees deep around 25% of the border with the dump, and is aiming, with the help of the forest department and Mangaluru Smart City Limited, to increase that perimeter in the future.

But this isn't all Jeeth and Green Brigade invest their time and energy into. Another constant undertaking is the complete uprooting of large trees standing in the way of construction. Large machinery is rented to dig up the roots and move the tree to another location that needs it.

He's also using the famous Akira Miyawaki method of growing forests full of food to encourage animal life. He uses around 170 species of trees, shrubs, and herbs to saturate an area of ground with far more than it can hold.

The Miyawaki method involves leaving this crowded area to have a competition to see who grows tallest the fastest. It's a method perfect for creating a forest in a place where there hasn't been one in decades, such as Jeeth's project sites at Nanthoor, Gurupura, the Karnataka Polytechnic College, and Nandigudda.

One man can definitely change the world, but if there were a Jeeth Milan Roche for every community, the world wouldn't even need changing.

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