Dump it here

Trash takes on a life of its own in India, as do most other things.

Every morning a beautiful family (photos will be posted shortly) comes by to collect my trash. The mother (in her 40s), her daughter (around my age), and the daughter's two kids climb up and down the stairs of the apartment complex each and every day. They not only take my trash, but they clean the stairs, scrub the elevator, and gladly accept any and all leftover foods. I am told the apartment society pays their salaries...so no one can tell me how much they earn but I feel confident in saying it is mere pennies. For the most part no one interacts with the family, except this foreigner (clever way of saying me without actually saying me) who has fallen deeply in love with the little kids and cant help but give them fruits and veggies as well as clean water and cookies. The building whispers behind my back, but i dont mind one bit.
Let us move along. 

Having lived with so many devout environmentalists for my entire college career, several habits have been engrained: separate plastic and paper, compost your scraps, waste nothing. Thereforetoday under my sink lives an overflowing collection of plastic water bottles (forgive me, but its the only way you get clean water around these parts!), I keep my food scraps in a separate tub and dump it on the street for the cows to consume, and i reuse the cardboard boxes (from packages sent to me!) to make tacky wall hangings (look to the right) to decorate my apartment.

The other day someone questioned me on why I often refuse plastic bags at the grocery store. The answer seemed so obvious to me- the cows will choke on it and die and if the cows dont get to it then eventually it would make the earth choke and die so all in all plastic bags are bad. He wasnt impressed. He said, but what about all the people making a living off of picking through trash and reselling the plastic? What about the poor that rely on that income? 

I think its a faulty argument in many ways, but it got me thinking of how many people in India are making a "living" (maybe 3 bucks a day...maybe) off of others' unsustainable lifestyle choices. Many of these jobs have been passed down from generation to generation so just imagining the effort it will take to shift today's trash pickers to a new line of work wears me out. A lot of the laborers are remarkably talented in what they do, and most find it impossible to think outside the box, to make themselves stand out in a crowd of millions...billions. That is why you will see all the vegetable stalls in one row, why all the sponge sellers are concentrated in one area, and why getting something custom made or modified is nearly impossible.
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Witness, an organization I marvel at and hope to one day work closely with/for, manages The Hub a multimedia site that gives life to grassroots films. They are a wonderful, powerful source of information and something that we at Drishti strive to one day give to web browsers everywhere. Take a few minutes to check out this film and better understand the complexities and layers of every day life in India.

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