From trash mountains to waste segregation, a high-schoolers research and observation through the dump yards.

The garbage mountains along the Yamuna, reminded me of the dystopian scenes from the movie Idiocracy (2006), in which people living in the shadows of such mountains get buried under an avalanche of trash. Hence, I embarked upon a quest to explore solutions to such colossal challenges and this journey took me the sites in and around my city, Chandigarh.

Since 2019, I was associated with door-to-door campaigns for waste segregation in Mohali. Awarded as the Cleanest City in Punjab in 2023, I delved into this strategy of sorting waste at its origin. That demonstrated to me the possibility of successfully implementing sustainable solutions—like composting, recycling, and generating Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF). However, despite legal subsidies, challenges still lay in institutionalizing source segregation—in maintaining the momentum for its campaigns an