Garbage Disposal System - a thought

It was a long time back a group of my friends a e-mail chain going with some 'falthu' discussions. One of my friend came up with an idea/suggestion of "why not?" lets contribute something towards our society. The topic was garbage disposal system in India. The following was my reply where I have shared my thoughts:

Garbage Disposal System!

Good. Guys, I thought I will share some of my experiences about the system, however looking at the whole picture and past experiences I feel you can hardly make a change unless you are the government or the municipality or TATA Birla or Reliance Ambani!

First let me tell you my experience I had in California.

As you all expect me to say, yeah, it neat and clean, beautiful, extremely well maintained bla bla bla... Looking at the place, the people and the culture you will feel there is a system existing. Then you think how is this possible? As you observe, you will find out that even you and I will not like to throw anything on the road. Why ?

As there are two sides of a coin, there are two facts that make this possible. One is Government, other - the people. Government does their part by having dustbins all over the place, every street, every apartment, every shopping malls and all other place whatever that comes to your mind. Anywhere anytime you want to dispose something you have two trash cans in less than 50 meters of walkable distance. Well, wondering why two? One is for all crap and shit, the other is for substance that can be recycled such as soft drink cans and plastics.

Well, looking at all this you only get astound and take a deep breadth. Now the government's role is complete with its part of placing bins everywhere, and the people compliment this with making use of it!! With this being so much effective everywhere in that country, even by chance if you don't have one, you wont feel throwing one on the road. This is not the end of it all... you have the garbage collecting truck emptying all the trash every night while you are asleep. The next day when you want to throw something the trash are empty therefore avoiding overfill.

Coming back to India, here is my most recent experience. I went to Bangalore a few days back. It was the morning of 61st Indian Independence, getting down from the bus at Madiwala stop, I was looking for a trash to throw away the empty water bottle I had in my hand. But there was no trash at eye catching distance around that place. As I was waiting for my friend to pick me up, it was nearly half an hr I had the bottle in my hand hoping to dispose it at a proper place, but in the end I lost hope of finding one and thrown it away at a place where there was a huge pile of garbage disposed on one corner of the road.

Take an example of Chennai during Onyx days and now. There is a huge difference though the presence of Onyx made little difference to the tons of garbage disposed. During Onyx days, you at least had good number of trash around the place in most parts of the city. You had people coming and collecting it everyday. It looked as if there was a system in place. The other positive aspect of Onyx was that it gave employment to many people, most of them graduates with no suitable employment!

Thinking about what we can do, even if you want to keep one street clean, all you need is at least one trash. For that you have to buy one, for which you need money.

Now people, dont tell me that one can buy one trash and make a difference in that one street for the sake of argument. Talking this way may sound great but it will not have any impact on the society.

I appreciate all those who want to be a change. Even I want to be one. All I want to say is Think Big.

The government is not efficient for various reasons. Lets not discuss what are those reasons and waste time. If Reliance Ambani or TATA Birla as a private sector company think if they want to bring a change they can. Wondering why am I talking all this? The difference between Ambani or Tatas and you and I is money.

So we have to earn or rather make more money to invest in these ventures. Business is the best way of making money. Not every business comes good. Again you have to take a chance. Think of innovative business ideas. Manufacturing industry is big opportunity in India, food and beverages is evergreen so is retail for next few decades.

All we need to do is find ways to make big money and make use of that money to achieve all this. I am not here to tell you to make 66 billion US $ as in case of Ambani or 59 billion US $ as in case of Bill Gates. But we can certainly think of a turnover of a few crore rupees per year.

Know What?

Bill Gates spends 38 million US $ per year in charity. (Quoted from a recent interview of his when he stepped down as the Chairman of Miscrosoft)

Keep this mail chain going !!

Cheers
Ram