Want to Save the Environment But Don’t Know How? Segregate Waste

This isn’t for your kids or grand kids, it is for you to live a healthy life.

Two bins, green for wet waste and white for dry waste.

(Photo: Abhay Sharma/The Quint)

Video editor: Prashant Chauhan
Camera: Abhay Sharma
Camera assistant: Mayank Chawla

It’s World Environment Day again, a day where some of you may actually read environment-related news. Or at least, read a few articles, go “Really? I didn’t know that,” and then return to the grind.

Care about the environment but don’t know if you can do anything to save it? Begin by segregating waste. Neither is it too much work, nor is it hard to learn.

What Do You Have to Do?

Step 1: Throw all your organic waste into one bin (of a different colour, maybe green). Use another bin for regular waste like bits of paper, wrappers, dust collected while sweeping, etc.

Step 2: Give away those piles of newspapers to the kabadiwala. If you’re doing this already, then well done. But don’t forget to give away cardboard pieces too. Flatten them out first.

Step 3: Don’t throw away plastic, glass and metal. Ask if your kabadiwala will take it, or call up the nearest plastic collectors, who will likely be willing to come pick it up for you.

There’s one more step you can take, if you want to go the whole way.

Step 4: Segregate your toxic waste. Keep your discarded electronic appliances, bulbs, tubelights and batteries aside. These items can turn toxic when dumped in a landfill. Get in touch with an e-waste collector, who can reuse parts of these items and carefully dispose off the rest.

What Are the Benefits of Waste Segregation?

1. Every time you responsibly discard plastic, electronic appliances or paper, you save trees, energy and even money.

2. Only 9 percent of the world’s total plastic is recycled. This is an alarming figure, considering that the chemicals in plastic have been linked to ailments like diabetes and cancer. The plastic that is thrown out with the garbage finds its way to the streets, where cows and other animals end up eating it. The plastic that reaches the oceans ends up choking marine life.

3. Segregating waste reduces the total garbage in landfills by 60 percent, thereby giving some breathing space to our overflowing landfills.

4. The Residents Welfare Association (RWA) ends up saving money as the wet waste that is cleared up in the compost bins can be converted into manure.

So if you want to help make life on earth healthier for yourself and for others, you now know how.