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 and preventing relapses of households into mixed waste disposal.
In 2022–23, I undertook a case study in Ludhiana’s Tazpur dumping ground which hosts about 40 lakh tonnes of legacy waste. The bioremediation process implemented there, involved bio-mining machines that sift through waste and use it to produce bio-soil, inerts, and RDF. However, the struggle to find viable markets for these products and the groundwater contamination due to the landfill site highlighted to me the hurdles that lay in converting dump yards into valuable assets.
Finally, in 2023, I studied the market perspective of waste management during my internship with Sustainability Accelerator. It was an online internship launched by CBSE in collaboration with the industry partner, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited, and a UN-accredited non-profit, 1M1B. This program shifted my focus from treating source segregation as a ‘public good’ to a private one. Segregation, though a cost-effective and practical means of waste management, requires constant campaigning. So, I proposed that we undertake measures that make it a lifestyle practise. Like, through color-coded dustbins, incentivizing waste generators and collectors, and building a commodity chain beyond high-value items. Implementing a tiered reward system based on quantity and purity of segregated waste can also empower waste collectors and make their waste market-ready. Leveraging Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for low-value dry waste, like thin polythene bags, presents a clear opportunity for pursuing waste-segregation privately in households. Financial incentives can resolve issues of proper disposal.
With EPR implementation, smart data analysis, integrative market schemes, and public sensitization programmes, our garbage mountains can be transformed. ‘Segregate as you generate’ has to be the way of life for generations to come.
Student of class 11, Delhi Public School, Chandigarh.