Segregation

Rooting out the problem at source

Segregation of wastes at source is my pet solution to many of the problems we face with the garbage and environment today. It is possible to do it at home. With just a thought and a little practice, it can become a wonderful habit which not just keeps the environment clean, but our minds free too. By disposing our wastes - plastic, paper, glass, metal and degradables together with hazardous - we not only pollute the environment but are being the cause for dumping the earth with loads of waste which it can never eat up and digest, not spit out. It just remains there stinking, clogging the surface, clogging our waterways - and if we really love our children, we would function differently now.

So it is possible for me at home. Thankfully, in India there is a waste recycle market that buys our wastes gladly - newspapers can be stacked together and sold. All the bits of waste paper can be kept aside to be just given gratis to the old paper mart along with the old newspapers for which we get money by weight. Plastics - every bit of them, even the tiny corners that are cut from a milk satchet, can be cleaned and put back in a separate bin. This, along with the PET or any plastic bits and pieces are being taken for weight by the same newspaper guy. (I have taken a picture of my month-long segregated wastes, for which I got Rs. 50 from the cheerful young, old newspaper guy, Pandian. He is ready to take any old recyclable for money - paper, plastic, cloth, metal, toys, dolls...this and that. Each time he visits my home, I feel a great burden removed off my shoulders. And since he pays money to get them, I am sure that all of it is going to the recycle bin. He told me our old newspapers go to China!

All the bio-degradable wastes, all the used tea leaves - I flush it out again through the strainer and put it in a bag, vegetable and fruit peels, food wastes - all collected separately. They go directly to the earth, in a pit. I will soon begin composting too and use it for the trees which I may plant soon. - Swahilya Shambhavi

Pic: Pandian taking away my plastics and newspaper collections of a month.