Noida was founded in 1976 on cheap, empty land—an old alluvial plain with brackish groundwater no one could drink. Fifty years later, the city survives on water carried from Haridwar through a colonial-era canal, not any foresight of its planners. Even that supply is unreliable, shutting down 30-40 days a year. Groundwater levels have plummeted from 75-100 feet in 2000 to 200-600 feet today, with extraction at 105% of replenishment. Nobody trusts the tap, so everyone pays extra—creating a parallel economy of RO water and plastic bottles. The illusion of sustainability hides a city running out of water, one borewell at a time.

In July 2026, a single landslide swallowed 100 metres of the Yamunotri National Highway in Uttarakhand, leaving pilgrims stranded and 120 roads blocked across the state. Heavy rain is only part of the story. The mountain was already fragile—cut, widened, stripped of vegetation. Climate change is loading more water onto it: for every degree of warming, the air holds seven per cent more moisture, making downpours heavier and more violent. A 2024 study found landslides twice as dense along widened road sections. The mountain isn’t being defeated by rain alone. Sometimes, we’ve made its job harder.

Indian cities receive enough rain each monsoon to quench its thirst, yet every summer brings dry borewells and tanker queues. The problem isn’t a lack of rain—it’s a failure to capture it. Subhajit Mukherjee, known as the Water Hero of India, is on a mission to change that. Through his ‘Mera Chhat, Mera Pani’ philosophy, he’s guiding households to turn rooftops into water sources and build simple soak pits that let the ground breathe again. His message is simple: stop rainwater from reaching the road in the first place. Because every rooftop can become a reservoir, and every shower can secure tomorrow’s water.

Plastic and chemical companies are pitching “advanced recycling” as the answer to America’s plastic waste crisis—a high-tech fix for hard-to-recycle plastics. But experts call it a “grossly misleading name for burning plastic.” Pyrolysis, the process behind it, generates contaminants like dioxins and phthalates, while releasing PFAS, heavy metals, and PM2.5 into communities already burdened by pollution. With two plants shuttering in June 2026 and operations proving financially unviable. The real solution isn’t burning waste—it’s reducing plastic at the source.

The packaging industry is rushing to replace plastic with fiber, but a troubling gap has emerged between sustainability claims and reality. Nearly half of new fiber-based launches carry recyclable labels, yet functional coatings often compromise fiber integrity and complicate real-world recycling. The result? Many “eco-friendly” packages don’t actually close the loop. As greenwashing concerns intensify, brands are being pushed to “prove it, not just say it”. With stricter regulations looming and consumer trust at stake, the industry’s next challenge isn’t creating plastic alternatives—it’s making them genuinely recyclable at scale.