Waste is one of the biggest challenges, both in urban and rural areas of the country. The way in which it is generated & the way it is disposed is, more or less, a major pollutant of the environment. Waste segregation basically means keeping wet and dry waste separately, so that dry waste can be recycled and wet waste can be composted.
Waste from a house can be broadly divided in to two categories – dry waste and wet waste. Both need to be disposed and recycled differently. Wet waste includes cooked and uncooked food, waste from fruits and flowers, fallen leaves, dust from sweeping and other similar things. On the other hand, paper, plastic, rubber, metals, leather, cloth rags, wire, glass, household items, etc., fall under the category of dry waste. Remember that wet waste is organic and dry waste is not.
Urban India produces up to 188,500 tons of waste per day. Segregation and disposal is a major part & first step of disposing this waste. And we have an important part to play. So, what is it that we can do this Lenten season?
- Start by keeping two different waste containers/baskets for dry and wet waste in the kitchen.
- Send wet waste out of your home daily to the composting pit. Alternatively a lot of it can be reused as fertilizers in our own gardens. Store and send dry waste out of the home, once a week.
- Form a group of like-minded people & explain waste segregation to your family / neighbours in your apartment building.
- Get separate storage drums to collect the dry waste collectively, which can also be recycled and reused in some or the other way.
- Have the dry waste picked up by the Dry waste collection centre or your local scrap dealer.
Creating waste is a very easy task as compared to tackling its disposal. Due to the inappropriate methods of waste management, it has turned out to pose a threat to the existing ecology balance. By differentiating the waste as wet and dry, it becomes easy for us to dispose them effectively.
Let us start afresh this Lent, and practice waste segregation from the most basic level, i.e. our families.
Input from Ancy Albert.
