Zero Waste Garbage

The site of dust bin, or dumping grounds of garbage in any Indian city says a lot about, what has gone wrong as India is rapidly urbanizing.

The dustbins, overflowing with garbage, are surrounded by dogs, crows, cows, and finally the rag pickers
The stench from rotting garbage makes people throw garbage around the bin, not into it.
All the storm water drains, available places on sides of road, are littered with plastic, paper, etc.
People typically put all garbage in a plastic bag, tie it, and throw it in dustbin.
Municipality simply takes the garbage for dumping in a landfill.
Rag-pickers converge at the city dumping grounds to collect the dry garbage that they could have as well collected from our doorstep.

“Mixing all types of garbage” is root cause of all the problems. Moreover, all of us are responsible for this.

No municipality in developed world will process mixed, rotting garbage in way that causes damage to environment. We cannot blame the government here.

Rising income, and more westernization means our garbage will have more and more manmade things like plastic, paper, and less biodegradable stuff.

Plastic, paper do not decompose in a land fill.

Used battery cells, have hazardous metals, that pollute ground water, by leaching action with rainwater.

Not mixing (or Separation) of garbage can only prevent degrading environment.

There is no alternative but learn habit of separating the garbage, and help its recycling.

In Mumbai, it is now mandatory to segregate waste. However, few citizens follow the law and municipality does not enforce the law.

By encouraging ourselves and neighbors to have an additional waste basket for dry garbage apart from one for wet kitchen waste, we could achieve the following:

SLK Foundation wants to reach out to every Indian, especially in cities, on changing our habits regarding household garbage.