Being on the garbage beat in an outlying section of Chennai Metropolitan Area

At Muttukadu on East Coast Road, the front-opening garbage bin has its mouth ajar, about to puke its smelly contents. Those contents are more tightly packed together than occupants of a rush-hour elevator. But that is not even half attention-worthy as what follows. The garbage has to be transferred to a tractor-hauled roofless goods carrier. The mixed waste has been in the bowels of the bin for three days. Out comes a casuarina pole to hold the shutter open. A bedsheet is spread in front of the open garbage bin. On it is plonked an aluminium container. With what looks like a shrub rake, clumps of waste are clawed and pushed into the container. The process is repeated. And when the spillovers in the bedsheet are sizeable, the bedsheet is held by two and the mucky contents thrown into the carrier. 

The one supervising this work points out that in Muttukadu panchayat, garbage bins are placed on ECR and in the side streets. The bins are cleared by turns, each in three days, the time it apparently takes for a bin to get filled to the brim. 

Two thoughts climb out of that bin, elbowing away the garbage. One, can’t these workers have the benefit of slightly better technology, probably not a heavy truck-mounted hydraulic compactor, but something better that what they have at their disposal now? 

And two, should not waste segregation and composting at site be followed more stringently in these circumstances? The greater human contact should be the prod driving the initiative to ensure decomposing biodegradable waste is dealt with right where it is generated. ECR is lined with nurseries, the sale of compost generated by residents to these nurseries is an option.