India’s ‘waste’ to
transform Bharat
Divya A, TNN 27 September 2009, 04:59am IST
Life in Salidhana village in Madhya Pradesh was a
constant struggle for water. After all, it had just one hand pump for the
entire village. Till one day,
when a new initiative called ‘Clothes for Work’ motivated the villagers to
dig a well for themselves. Under this plan, clothes and dry rations were
offered to them in lieu of wages for the labour they had put in. It worked.
Starting with seven people, the entire village came together to dig wells.
Something similar happened in Sukhasan, a small village in Bihar’s
Madhepura district. Villagers were scared to send their children to school as
13 of them had perished while swimming in a river on their way there. Here
too, the ‘Cloth for Work’ initiative worked. But instead of a well, they were
motivated to build a bamboo bridge.
But where do so many clothes come from? Urban households who discard them.
That’s the power of waste. Could you ever have imagined that the junk at home
could motivate many to work for their betterment?
This innovative way of reusing and recycling old stuff has worked elsewhere
too. Shanti Bhavan, a charitable boarding school for poor children in a
village near Bangalore,
also accepts usable urban waste from abroad and passes it on to needy
children. “The clothes, hair clips and pens which these children use, a huge
chunk of which comes from American households, is routed to us through our
partner organizations there,” says Shanti Jayanthashri, who manages
development and fund-raising at the school.
“Sometimes, we personally go and collect the donations from nearby
households, but we ensure that they are in good working condition. It eases
our financial burden,” she adds.
Goonj, the voluntary organization responsible for initiating the Clothes for
Work programme, is also starting Vastra Samman, a 25-city campaign which will
urge people to give away their unused stuff. The campaign kicks off on Sunday
(September 27), coinciding with the Joy of Giving week. It expects to collect
more than one crore units of material to benefit 20 lakh people.
“The material collected will be used as a motivational resource for villagers
to dig up wells, build bridges, repair roads and schools in villages in 21 states,”
says Anshu Gupta, founder of Goonj. “The campaign will also make people
living in cities realize their potential in changing the face of their
countr,” he says.
In fact, recycling is a common and ancient practice and there is recorded
evidence of it dating back to 400 BC. Many countries in the West have
collection centres for urban waste, which is then re-processed and resold.
Sometimes, it is given away as charity. The entities that benefit from this
service, either as donors, recipients, sellers or buyers, can be businesses,
schools, community groups and individuals.
In the US,
reuse centers include Goodwill Industries, Second Harvest Food Bank, and
Habitat for Humanitely ReStores. In Australia,
Reverse Garbage in Sydney
is the largest reuse center, diverting more than 12,000 cubic metres of
resources each year.
Ramesh Sharma of Ekta Parishad, a voluntary organization working in remote
villages of 11 states, says, “This
kind of initiative can bode well for India if the disposal is also
fast. If you collect mountains of unused stuff, it will be difficult to
manage the logistics unless you have manpower and network to re-process and
distribute it.”
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