An easy way to maintain a clean environment is to ensure that garbage is dropped in their respective bins and not on the streets. This may seem obvious, but sadly, is not so, for lack of civic sense sometimes stems from lack of garbage bins in the city itself.
Observation:
Garbage disposal has always been a problem, not only at an individual level, but also at the level of governments. Ensuring that people do not litter the streets is possible only when sufficient grabage disposal units are provided at every other corner. But providing these big bins alone does not solve the problem. Collecting the garbage from the bins / emptying them into larger containers and more importantly, handling the potential issue of the bin itself being stolen overnight is something that requires lot of thinking. Paris (France) has done a beautiful job in tackling this problem. This post details how this has been done.
Suggestion:
The solution to the problem of garbage disposal is quite simple:
1. Instead of garbage bins, shift to garbage bags hanging from circular holders (see picture). These would be large transparent polythene bags, that are sturdy enough to hold few kilograms of garbage.
2. Ensure that the city is liberally sprinkled with garbage bags, one every 50 mts.
3. Garbage collection is made extremely simple with this design, for the bags simply need to be dumped in the trucks without the added task of emptying the bins. A new garbage bag can then be placed in the holder. This also reduces the accidental spillage of garbage from the bins that may take place when the bin is being emptied.
4. Transparent bags provide easy visibility to the contents inside. Apparently, this model was adopted in Paris after a bomb scare in the garbage cans. Transparent garbage bags also overcome the potential problem of bombs / undesirable objects being hidden inside.
5. Last, but not the least, these garbage bags hardly require much investment or infrastructure. Placing them liberally all across the town / city would instead bring down the additional cost that would otherwise be incurred in keeping the city clean.
Garbage bags thus seem a sure-shot way to clean up the city automatically, develop civic sense in people, make garbage collection a far easier job and also bring down the cost of keeping the city clean. So, go ahead and spread this idea in your own city and make it clean!
5 comments:
Hmm interesting......although I have one concern...can we find a replacement for 'plastic bags.'
US is big on recycling...hope the world awakes to the tunes of recycling as well......Nice article!!
Clean streets and good neighborhood is a reason enough for increasing the civic sense.These are some things i though which could be help further increase this sense :-
1] There could posters on the garbage bins or somewhere else explaining the benefits of using them.There could be slogans like
"Use me and i would provide you energy.Ignore me and you would spend energy cleaning"
2]They can show computer simulated pictures of the streets and their neighborhood if they continue not to use these dumpsters at the current rate.Like before and after pics.(6 months down the line 1 yr ,2yrs etc)
3]Incentives are always good to everyone.The businesses who use the recycled stuff from the garbage can provide benefits to you.Like each garbage can user can be uniquely be identified by his id and also the garbage machines can register the amount of recyclable dump being provided by this user.A points system can be used to redeem these at grocery stores,malls,medicine stores etc.
Thank you for your comments. Its always nice to have insight of different people. Sorry for the late reply:
@Anas: Yes, replacement for plastic bags would be an even better idea :)
@Anand: I really liked your ideas, especially the third point about giving people incentives. Indivudual incentive may not be feasible, but community/neighbourhood incentives may be a big hit, which can then be divided amongts the residents :)
Thank you for the suggestions. I do hope at least some of these can be implemented making this world a better place :)
When can we expect ur next blog...
Hey Anand, really sorry for the late reply. Am working on the next post, and hopefully will upload one in a few days. :) Thanks for the motivation to keep writing :)
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