Anti-pollution campaign bags global environment award

New Delhi: 'Clean Air India Movement (CLAIM)', said to be India's largest anti-pollution campaign, on Tuesday bagged the 'Energy and Environment Foundation Global Award 2016' for efforts to tackle the problem of air toxicity.

The award was presented to CLAIM founder Vijay Kannan by Satish B. Agnihotri, the President of Energy and Environment Foundation, a global organisation constituted to serve as a catalyst to address global energy and environment issues for a greener planet. 

The occasion was the 7th World Renewable Energy Technology Congress, which was inaugurated by Union Minister of State for Power, Coal and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal. Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar was also present. 

"It is a great honour to be recognised for initiating and pursuing positive steps to address the grave problem of air pollution, which threatens human health and wellness in most urban environments across our country," said Vijay Kannan, head of Blueair and founder of CLAIM.

Under the CLAIM initiative, it has been decided to plant one million trees across the country in the next three years.

He said CLAIM will implement a non-partisan programme aimed to raise awareness among the people about the need to tackle alarming levels of air pollution.

Under the CLAIM initiative, several surveys have been undertaken to look at increasing number of deaths caused by indoor and outdoor pollution, regarding which proper statistics were not available till now.