Clean up of waste blackspots

Sanchita Vishwa

Waste management in developing countries especially is a huge concern and there is growing need to take proper steps to implement methods to deal with safe disposal of garbage. Often times, due to improper waste disposal, people get diseases and places are deemed inhabitable. Orohalli is a village around 40 kms from Bangalore city, coming under what is termed as "Bangalore Rural". The major occupation of people living there is agriculture. This is acute lack of awareness about wet/dry waste segregation amongst them and there is no waste disposal system in place. Sanchita gathered a few friends, went to this village and spoke to some of the villagers about the importance of waste segregation and proper waste disposal. They then cleaned up two areas in the village where garbage was being dumped for months. Seeing the outcome, the villagers were also motivated to implement cleaner methods of disposal and vowed to segregate their waste.

Sanchita shared, "Environment protection/climate change is something I have always been passionate about. Waste disposal and cleaning is not something I had given much thought to, but after recently coming across an article that highlighted how most of our waste is disposed in water bodies like oceans and landfills on the outskirts of cities, I wanted to do something about the issue. We first went door-to-door campaigning, where we explained to the villagers about the concept of waste segregation and its importance. We told them our objective of helping them keep their village clean, which they were happy about and hence helped in directing us to the spots that needed cleaning. We conducted Awareness drive coupled with clean up of two garbage disposal sites, so that villagers could practically see the benefits of cleaner surroundings, themselves. Armed with rubber gloves, masks and huge bags to collect trash, we set out to clean up the sites ourselves, regardless of the stigma attached to garbage within the village. The 15 villagers who were impressed by the clean up drive, vowed to take this knowledge to the rest of the village, to ensure every house implements a waste segregation scheme."