Sunday, October 15, 2006
Recycling and Freecycling in Calcutta
There won't be any need to freecycle for many scores of years in Kolkata India. You cannot leave anything without it being taken, used, repaired, sold, sold again, taken apart for parts... you name it.
There are people here who are garbage pickers... an unsavoury profession, yes, but that is how they make their living and when you are hungry, there really is no choice.
Garbage is collected in two ways... there are few garbage cans. People just throw stuff on the street as they walk along. Or they empty their garbage out their house/apartment window into the gutter or into bags which are then put out on the street. Then at night, people come by to sweep it up into larger bags, which then are hauled to various street corners, where they are dumped. Then men, women and children pick their way through mountains of garbage for paper, plastics, useful items, and recycle them in one fashion or the other. They walk barefoot high up amongst a mixture of kitchen compost, junk, paper, plastic, toxic materials, sharp objects, filth and dust. It is shocking. What is left over is picked clean of organic matter by cows, crows, stray dogs and cats. Then what is left over is hauled away and then pigs go through it in a bigger dump.
If you have an appliance that is broken, say a toaster, which can be bought new for $10-$15, then instead of chucking it like we do, it can be repaired for as little as fifty cents or a dollar. So no need to dump stuff. Or if it is not repairable then someone will take it apart for parts and use it for something. When you live on the sidewalk and a tarp is your roof, and you cook stove is a clay pot with coals and sticks in it, then you can use just about anything.
Entire families live a few hundreds feet from our house on the sidewalk. They eat, live, work, play and socialize right there, in a sea of noise, with diesel-belching autorickshaws, taxis and rickety old buses. We are incredibly rich as we walk by. I don't know what to do. I can't feel anything sometimes. I don't know what is appropriate. If it is inappropriate for me to have a cup of coffee in a local upscale Starbucks look-alike for forty rupees here (one dollar), knowing that limbless beggars are outside the air conditioned café, waiting, then how is it any more appropriate to have a $2 coffee at Cha Cha Java in Parksville, just because it's far away and they are out of sight? At least this way I am fueling the local economy. It's difficult. The air is dirty, the place is completely overpopulated, with a population of more than 15 million people, with a city that is designed for perhaps one fifth of that. But in some strange way, they are recycling much better than we are. Nothing much is wasted.
There are many forces at work. Poverty has many roots, including pure economics, but there are also so many entrenched belief systems, about who is deserving and who is not. In fact this is not much different from Parksville, where we attend workshops to work on our well entrenched lack of self esteem. We get life coaches and therapy, to reprogram deep set notions that we are not deserving of love, health and prosperity. We have so much in common, our two communities.
Everyone has a business, or shall I say, scam. We all carry on somehow. Our various burdens are much different, but we have the same drive to live, prosper and multiply. To have sex. To eat tasty food. To look good. To play.
There are people here who are garbage pickers... an unsavoury profession, yes, but that is how they make their living and when you are hungry, there really is no choice.
Garbage is collected in two ways... there are few garbage cans. People just throw stuff on the street as they walk along. Or they empty their garbage out their house/apartment window into the gutter or into bags which are then put out on the street. Then at night, people come by to sweep it up into larger bags, which then are hauled to various street corners, where they are dumped. Then men, women and children pick their way through mountains of garbage for paper, plastics, useful items, and recycle them in one fashion or the other. They walk barefoot high up amongst a mixture of kitchen compost, junk, paper, plastic, toxic materials, sharp objects, filth and dust. It is shocking. What is left over is picked clean of organic matter by cows, crows, stray dogs and cats. Then what is left over is hauled away and then pigs go through it in a bigger dump.
If you have an appliance that is broken, say a toaster, which can be bought new for $10-$15, then instead of chucking it like we do, it can be repaired for as little as fifty cents or a dollar. So no need to dump stuff. Or if it is not repairable then someone will take it apart for parts and use it for something. When you live on the sidewalk and a tarp is your roof, and you cook stove is a clay pot with coals and sticks in it, then you can use just about anything.
Entire families live a few hundreds feet from our house on the sidewalk. They eat, live, work, play and socialize right there, in a sea of noise, with diesel-belching autorickshaws, taxis and rickety old buses. We are incredibly rich as we walk by. I don't know what to do. I can't feel anything sometimes. I don't know what is appropriate. If it is inappropriate for me to have a cup of coffee in a local upscale Starbucks look-alike for forty rupees here (one dollar), knowing that limbless beggars are outside the air conditioned café, waiting, then how is it any more appropriate to have a $2 coffee at Cha Cha Java in Parksville, just because it's far away and they are out of sight? At least this way I am fueling the local economy. It's difficult. The air is dirty, the place is completely overpopulated, with a population of more than 15 million people, with a city that is designed for perhaps one fifth of that. But in some strange way, they are recycling much better than we are. Nothing much is wasted.
There are many forces at work. Poverty has many roots, including pure economics, but there are also so many entrenched belief systems, about who is deserving and who is not. In fact this is not much different from Parksville, where we attend workshops to work on our well entrenched lack of self esteem. We get life coaches and therapy, to reprogram deep set notions that we are not deserving of love, health and prosperity. We have so much in common, our two communities.
Everyone has a business, or shall I say, scam. We all carry on somehow. Our various burdens are much different, but we have the same drive to live, prosper and multiply. To have sex. To eat tasty food. To look good. To play.
