Waste - Can we afford to waste it ?

An interesting thought. And this was the title of a presentation by Dr. Francin Pinto, at a meeting I attended.

The basic premise is very simple. Waste, if sensibly handled can be an asset instead of a liability. And this becomes even more critical in large urban cities, where waste takes on a form all of its own.

I broadly agree with most of the views of Dr. Pinto’s presentation. However, my thoughts or on an unrelated issue. And that is of handling waste in the home and workplace. Whilst this is much more of a micro level issue, I believe that bringing in discipline in this aspect of our life could help in reducing the problem of a dirty city. 

Currently our city (Mumbai), is probably in contention for 1 of the world’s dirtiest city. And the problem begins with us. A very common scene when you’re driving around the city is a car ahead, rolling down the windows and throwing out some garbage. In the middle of the road. And whilst you would expect this to be a taxi or a driver, on most occasions its a big fancy car and a group or family of extremely well dressed people. So obviously they may have got a college degree, but no education.

And then these very same people will be talking at parties and other forums about how dirty the city is. Walk down Mumbai city at 6 or 7 in the morning and you’ll find that its nice and clean. You can see the cleaning workers sweep the roads and the pavements. By 9, the road is back to square 1. We just don’t seem to care about our city or its cleanliness.

The government came up with an original and wonderful idea of having private agencies police cleanliness. They were supposed to become the “Clean Mumbai” police and had the authority to fine citizens who were littering. Unfortunately this does not seem to have made an impact. And the only time I’ve seen them is negotiating a bribe with a roadside vendor who had littered.

I guess educating people and having some kind of a monitoring and implementing mechanism, things will go from bad to worse. One of the ways to improve compliance is using technology. Use cameras to capture people littering and have an automatic fining mechanism. Just having 1000’s of cameras in various places would help not only in reducing littering, but also in various other aspects of policing such as traffic violations, petty crimes and maybe even major crimes.

All it needs is political will. Our politicians have a major challenge in going with what is convenient for the majority since the majority don’t want change. And since they are the ones that vote, what option do they have. Until enough of us want the change and become the change. 

So the next time you see someone littering, pick up the litter and hand it back to them, with a smile, saying “It’s my city and you can’t dirty it.”