I read an article about a cleanup drive in Mumbai yesterday that was reported by Mumbai Mirror. The article started with something, that I have experienced many a times.
I rarely travel by train. But when I do, I have seen educated well dressed women litter, and I am talking of first class compartment. So essentially I am referring to educated career women. I am not limiting this behavior to train commuters. The other day I was traveling with this rather well to do, career woman in her car. We stopped to take some take away from McDonalds, finished our meal in her car while we traveled. To my utter horror, she very conveniently rolled down her window and threw her wrapper and paper cup on the road. I didn’t even get time to react and she was done with the waste. I then told her she was wrong in doing so. She was indifferent.
Whenever such offenders are told that they shouldn’t litter or what they are doing is wrong, I get scorned at. Well, at the risk of getting into arguments I have time and again chided people (known and otherwise also) against littering.I personally, always carry a polythene bag in my purse to collect any liter, wrappers, waste papers etc. Once at home or office I dispose off these in the dustbin. I then started offering to collect others liter in this polythene and keep in my bag so it could be disposed off in the trash can. That is the basic way of handling this. I have realized that people follow action more than words. So maybe we need to show them what to do and do it for them to begin with and then hope that they follow.
So, here is my idea to start a campaign called #Carryapoly, where the participants can carry a polythene always, and when they see anyone about to litter, they may offer the same to collect such litter. Some of my friends suggested that we should use recyclable polythenes. That’s a good idea. We could do that. We can urge people to use and re-use the polythene bags that they get home for #carryapoly. We can use:
1. Smaller garbage bags
2. Zip bags
3. Branded shopping bags
4. Recyclable white polythene bags
Lets start small, then maybe this drive will grow big eventually and something may come out of it. Those who are interested in this campaign please use the #carryapoly hashtag in your tweets related to the campaign. Please give-in your suggestions. This is just a very nascent idea. We need to be together to make this work.
Ciao till the next update.
