We take plenty of time to go through recipe books! Cooking also consumes a lot of time, but we don’t seem to mind. Enough time is also wasted at shopping malls picking the right sauce or the best wafers to accompany the dish. Enough time is allocated to relish the dish. But then once it is all done with, and it is time to segregate waste, we throw up our hands in despair and find plenty of time to make excuses!
There are two sides to the waste story.
All waste from the house needs to go directly into the dustbin, right? Actually, right as well as wrong! It needs to go into two separate bins; since waste from the house can be broadly divided in to two distinct categories – dry waste and wet waste!
Wet waste includes cooked and uncooked food, waste from fruits and flowers, fallen leaves, dust from sweeping, etc. Plastic, food product wrappers, rubber, metals, leather, cloth rags, wire, glass and such, fall under the category of dry waste. Wet waste is organic while dry waste is not. In simpler terms, things that are quickly biodegradable are wet waste, while things which will take centuries to do so or will never degrade will be counted as dry waste. The thing to note is that both need to be disposed of differently.
Segregating is as simple as the word itself. It can be easily carried out at home by using two dustbins – one for dry waste and the other for wet waste.
Segregate; otherwise be left high and dry!
If we do not segregate, we will be left at the mercy of one of the most harmful gases – methane. And more! Read to see how.
One of the most common practices of disposing waste from the city is by sending them to landfills. Improper segregation wherein biodegradable waste is not properly separated from non biodegradable waste may cause mixing in landfills. This can lead to release of Methane gas, one of the most harmful greenhouse gases. Also it can lead to toxic release in the ground and eventual contamination of ground water.
We all know the benefits of recycling. Most of the waste can be reused and recycled. Proper segregation leads to proper recycling. However, improper segregation process can cause many things to be left out from the recycling process; we fail to realise one simple thing: dry waste follows a completely different process of recycling from biodegradable wet waste.
It doesn’t take long, nor does it take too much effort to segregate! And the results benefit not just us, but the generations to come. In the best interests of all, the earth included! As kids we were taught to put all waste into the dustbin; we just need to do a minor adjustment – put the waste into the correct dustbin!
