Who takes the trash out? who cares?

A friend of mine who runs a library was trying to conduct a workshop for kids and adults about composting. She hired a consultant for this and gave out invitations to the members and her friends. But after several attempts at getting people to sign up for the workshop, she decided to cancel it for lack of numbers. She says that most people were not interested as they stayed in apartments and felt that it was messy to have a compost bin within their apartments.

When I heard this I realised that we are so caught up with the so called modern ways of living that we have to pay and induce people to do something natural.

I stay in the centre of the city near the house of a former Chief Minister. And even this part of the city has no garbage segregation whatsoever. All kinds of things are collected and thrown into one garbage truck. I sometimes wonder what would happen if the city runs out of places to dump garbage.

The problem is, garbage segregation, recycling or composting is something that has to be inculcated in our day to day lives. If segregation has to be done, it has to be the responsibility of the family members to keep the paper and the other bio-degradables in a separate bin. Many people feel that it is beneath their dignity to do anything remotely associated with recycling or segregating garbage in their homes. The don't like throw out their own garbage bags. Its always the maid who takes the trash out in a middle class household in India. Most people don't care what happens after that.

If people were forced to have compost bins, I am sure we would have a separate set of Corporation/Government workers who would be hired to do the work for us. They probably would wear green uniforms and ask us to give our biodegradable stuff to them. These people would then put the stuff in a central compost system in the locality and we would have a giant composting pit. I think this would be a more likely scenario in Chennai rather than training individual households to carry out composting.  And yet we would complain that the Government is extremely inefficient in their ways and garbage is never collected on time.

The point is not to become too pessimistic but I think to realise that the change has to be brought about to suit our unique lifestyle in India. There is hope as long as we still have kabbadiwalas roaming the streets. We still have places where we can sell our old newspapers and scrap and they do the segregation for us. There is a lot of recycling that happens through mechanics and service men who deal with electronics and appliances. An old appliance can still find a buyer in India. I  hope we see the day when we have recycle bins where we can put our plastic bags and containers in a grocery store in Chennai. Until then I will just hand them over to my maid who is always glad to get recycle it for me.