What are we going to do with our waste?

Heaven knows...as long as we just let it rot as waste, it won't be of any use to us. It reminds me of a wonderful title I came across on a brochure promoting an event in Mumbai, on waste management, in 2009 - WASTE IS NOT A WASTE TILL IT IS WASTED. I was given the job of proofreading the dummy copy before it went for printing. 

It will remain a loaded phrase for as long as we have waste in our planet or elsewhere in our universe and I've come to accept it as the mantra for waste management. I don't know where the brochure came from or why it ended up on my table but I'm thankful that I got to see it. So, hats off to whoever developed that wonderful line. 

Now, what are we going to do about the piles of waste lying everywhere in this country? I'm no expert of waste management nor am I a social scientist but I can see a couple of things right away when I think of the filthy 'wasteland' that my country has become. First, three-fourths of the visible waste everywhere seems to be plastic and second, we're a slack race that hasn't been able to rise to the level where it matters one bit, to us. Yet, I'm told that there are parts of the country where things are much better than where I live. I happen to be in Delhi NCR.

I've never been to Kerala or anywhere in the South, for that matter, except Hyderabad, for a couple of days where I didn't find time to see the Charminar! I didn't find Hyderabad too different from any of the other Indian cities I've been to. However, Kerala has been in the news for all the right reasons except for the unfortunate event when those paranoid Italian security guards ended up killing two of our fishermen, mistaking them for Somali pirates. Getting back to the point, Kerala boasts of a near cent percent literacy rate, near advanced economy HDI, a 50 billion USD+ temple treasure equivalent to or more than the state's total debt, to speak of a few.

Now, I hear that the state is pretty clean and green. Well, I have no doubt about the greenery as I've seen enough high resolution pictures of different parts of Kerala but when I heard about the comparatively better civic sense in Kerala, from more than one or two individuals who were from the north, I was pleasantly surprised. So, is it true? 

A part of India with one of the highest population densities, that has found a way to manage its waste? They call it 'God's own country' in the world of advertising and marketing and if Kerala has found a way to manage her waste, then it deserves every bit of this larger-than-life tagline.

I'm sure that a lot of people are already talking about the piles of unattended waste on our roadsides. I've also seen the lack of interest in our mainline mass media (TV and Print) to cover this issue in any way. If and when they do, they seem to do it with an air of nonchalance just as they would like to avoid covering everything in Kashmir that relates to ethnic cleansing of three quarters of a million Hindus who are now refugees in their own country. 

It's evident that plastic poly bags and packs are the main source of waste in India and the obvious first step is to ban them altogether, even if it means the loss of a few million jobs that are dependent on enterprises manufacturing such poly bags and packaging. We need to find ways to use this labour force to produce bio-degradable packaging material. The biggest hurdle in this endeavour - we're a slack race with no sense of our own priorities and will probably remain that way till kingdom come.