Like you, I threw all my waste in one bin. Let it fill up until it stank. With paper clip pinned on my nose I gathered the bag and took a walk in the dark night with dogs and guiltily threw it in a rubbishy heap at the street corner. Several of you and me made the same journey in the dead of the night and avoided meeting eye. Me and my fellow conspirators the next day held our nose away from this heap as we passed next morning, mumbling about inept corporation workers who did not clean it up.
The next day a new heap had appeared night next to my place. I closed the doors and windows and lighted some perfumed candles and ignored the whole mess until I had to step out again. At least my house was clean. The same night someday started a fire on the rubbishy heap that had grown like a pig sty in an empty plot - 3 houses down. Boarding the windows did not help anymore. The smoke and stench was everywhere. I packed my pajamas and camped in my friend's place.
One day I noticed a Corporation worker handling the waste and trying to extract the plastic meshed with kitchen waste only to pull out her hand in hurry as a used sanitary pad tumbled out. She wrinkled her nose and tried again and this time a bloodied finger was pulled out when it got cut against a jagged glass jar in the same bag.
It wasn't some unknown villain who had caused her harm and put her into such misery. It was someone like me. I felt very bad at myself. How did I go so low and made another suffer , when I would not do that to myself? Just to save a few measly minutes watching an ad on the idiot box I have been polluting my environment, causing embarrassment and agony to my fellow human being and piling in on my guilt. The time had come for a personal revolution.
I started segregating my waste. Dry waste - paper, plastic (cleaned and dried), plastic bottles etc., went into one bin. Kitchen discards went into another. In some areas in the city such an arrangement seems to work splendidly. When the waste pickers dump this segregated waste in different containers and use them for re-cycling. Unfortunately my area was not equipped for this. Following a discussion with a friend I joined a session of waste management http://www.greencommandos.youthforseva.org/ and came to know about the wet waste composter (Kambha) by Daily Dump - http://www.dailydump.org/. Daily Dump also sells bio detergents and what nots.
Initially I hit a few rough patches managing my wet waste in the composter. With a few more tips from the site I realised a good 1:1 ratio of leaves and kitchen waste with turmeric and some salt (water when pile is too dry) worked the best. An occasional stirring of one in 4-5 days with compost accelerators was sufficient. Now all my stinky wet waste was taken care of. My Kambha even on wet days does not smell, an occasional fly does not bother me. I have used it successfully for the last 2 years and generated good quality manure of almost 15-20 kg which incidentally is up for grabs. Mail me to collect it. The dry waste from my home is collected and given away to organization (Smarthanam in my case) that recycle dry waste. I have been trying hard to reduce the quantity of this by using cloth bags. As a result, there no waste walks out my house into the eye-sore heaps anymore and I feel contended and proud of myself.
I have gone a step further a stopped using disposable sanitary too. Wasn't too tough on me since back home, cloth pads were a norm. Even on my most busy day I have not used a disposable pad. I bought a set of dozen from a local NGO - Jivika and been using them since.
Ultimately we are the owners of this waste and must own it up. Its not your city's responsibility to clean up after you. You must do the least bit and at least segregate. This wonderful drawing from Zen Pencils sums it up just perfectly.
