Tuesday, 8 July 2025

SOME INESCAPABLE TRUTH ABOUT SUCCESS




Dreaming about success and achieving that success are two very different things. Visualizing your dreams can be a powerful tool. Imagine yourself reaching your goals in detail. This makes them feel closer to your heart. It gives you focus and pushes you to work towards what you want. Dreams have deep spiritual and psychological meanings for many. Everyone sees success differently. Some view it as achieving goals; others see it as reaching their full potential. These dreams often show personal growth and the joy of overcoming challenges.

 

But, you cannot stop here and keep dreaming. While it is perfectly normal for people to have dreams and goals, but there is a clear difference between those who make their dreams come true and those who spend their lives thinking about what they could have achieved. One of the inherent traits of human beings is having the drive to be something more, to do something better. This is why there are many inventors and entrepreneurs, as they see a need or a gap and they do their utmost to fill it. To fulfill your dreams, you need to become a better version of yourself. You have to accept some harsh truths that might be preventing you from reaching your full potential. These are the harsh truths that you need to hear: 

 

1. You’re the Only Thing that is holding yourself back

Many people don’t even make it to Step 1 of fulfilling their dreams because they stay on Step 0 forever. This means that even before they have made an effort to reach their dreams, they have already put themselves down or held themselves back. Many people are just too afraid or do not believe in themselves enough. Whatever it is that you keep telling yourself, stop, as it’s holding you back before you even try. Many simply waste time procrastinating on absolutely unimportant instant gratification issues, which can lead to no achievement and no lasting glory. Dreaming is good, if you can dream it, you can become it, but only day dreaming leads to nowhere.

 

2. Step One is Always the Hardest

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and it is not easy to take that step. Even if you have finally psyched yourself up to follow your dreams, you might find that the beginning is the toughest, most confusing, and most discouraging step of all. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that the goals might be too big and therefore, too difficult to plan for and execute. You have to break them down into small steps and take one small step at a time. Not only will this make your dream seem more achievable, but you will also break down that huge goal into smaller and more measurable ones.

Another reason is the lack of information. You might have a fantastic idea, but simply lack the knowledge to figure out how to proceed. In this case, it’s very important to do your research, ask people, observe, and do some small experiments so that you know what the status quo is and where your idea fits in the big picture. Internet and AI are excellent tools to help you in this direction and it has given you geographical neutrality. You don’t have to be in Columbia and Harvard in person to seek their resources and assistance. If you have a worthy project and an analytical mind help and resource is far easy to access today than ever before.

 

3. Great Things Take Time and Effort

Once you have identified your main and smaller goals, you need to simply start making it reality. For example, if you’re developing a programme or a product, you should be prepared to spend a lot of time designing, testing, creating, and improving it before you can go further. While our brains are hardwired to lean towards instant gratification, you can dictate to yourself that your goal might take much more time and work.

Great things take time. Whether it is your investment in bonds and stocks, or the wisdom that you are gathering with age, or the expertise you acquire in your chosen profession, hobby or sports, your fluency in a new language or your skills with the violin or piano, they all take time and they all take a lot of dedicated efforts.

Yashaswi Jaiswal’s story is an embodiment of unwavering determination and the power of chasing dreams. His journey began at a young age when he left his home in Bhadohi, Uttar Pradesh, at the tender age of 13. Driven by his unwavering passion for cricket, he embarked on a solo journey to Mumbai, the city of dreams, to pursue his cricketing aspirations. However, his journey was far from easy. Facing immense hardships, Jaiswal found himself living in tents outside the city’s maidans, a stark contrast to the life he envisioned. He sold snacks to meet his expenses but kept on chasing his dream till he eventually established himself as an elite cricketer of the Indian cricket team.

 

4. Not Everyone Will Support You

While those close to you might be your biggest fans, you will encounter many critical people nevertheless. Some might be discouraging you out of jealousy, but you must simply accept that you’ll never be able to please everyone. No matter how good you are at what you do, there’s a certain level of envy that comes with success. Some people feel the need to set themselves up as the opposition to your success just because they are jealous of your accomplishments. Your life will be a lot more fulfilling when you don’t think about what other people say or think. That does not mean disrespecting a contrarian view point. If it is a worthy objection, this is the time to counter it, in its infancy, and not when it has become an ugly monster.

People aren’t going to like you for working hard and being productive. Do what is best for you, and show the world what you can do. Not everyone will be happy for your success. It can be discouraging to have people with negative attitudes around you when you are trying to make a headway in life. If such people surround you, you need to change your company. Surround yourself with a circle of genus, positive thinking, always encouraging people, who are willing to go all the way to fulfill your dreams.  

 

5. You Cannot Succeed without Taking Big Risks

You’ll never be 100% sure that you will succeed, which is why you have to take huge risks at times. If you wait, you’ll never get started. Unfortunately, in life and in business, just because your idea makes complete sense doesn’t mean that everyone will agree and support you. You might have a great concept, but you’ll never be able to fully predict how people will react to it. A researcher in India is usually satisfied with a good publication, because till this point there is no risk or minimum risk involved. The next stage is patent, which will involve some risk. The next logical step is monetizing the patent, which will involve even larger risk. But, how else can you succeed?

Jeff Bezos, a Princeton University graduate had secured a high-paying job on Wall Street as the senior vice president of hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Co. However, Bezos felt called to entrepreneurship. In 1994, he risked it all by sacrificing his job in finance to found Amazon, which began as an online bookstore run out of his garage. Today, he also heads the spaceflight company Blue Origin, and is the wealthiest man in the world!

 

6. You Cannot Control Everything

As letting go of control goes directly against our modern, industrialized way of living – we are go-getters, doers, architects of our destiny, build things and make things happen on our own terms; we don’t wait for anything to happen on someone else’s terms! The unfortunate truth is that, despite your best efforts, you cannot make everything go your way. This is especially true when it comes to other people’s actions and behavior. In these kinds of situations, you just need to let go and let things happen the way they’re supposed to happen. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you don’t take action and simply wait for things to happen, but the art of letting go is vital in managing expectations and measuring effort.

This is true from personal goals to international trade, everything will not follow expected mathematically calculated trajectory. Things like losing contact with a lunar module even happen to the smartest ISRO glitterati. Trump’s tariffs have brought tsunami in international trade. These are uncontrollables that we will have to learn to live with and negotiate from time to time.

 

7. You Can’t Do It All

No one can be jack of all trades. Even as an entrepreneur, you’ll need to get some individuals involved to make your business come to life. For example, if you want to eventually manufacture a lot of products, you’ll need to work with a reputable logistics company to find ways to decrease your work and improve efficiency. When you let go and let other people contribute, you free yourself up to focus on other more important things as well.

Research also works similarly – each associate from different speciality contributes his/her bit and that is invariably better than what would be on table if you tried to do everything. So, we must collaborate, respect our colleague’s domain expertise and acknowledge their contribution. While compiling a multi author text book of Plastic Surgery, the only one in English published outside U.S and U.K, we realized the importance of collaborating with the best and the brightest minds!

People are putting in crazy hours to get ahead at work and then dive into driving the kids to music lessons, soccer practice, and homework, and off course, cooking dinner. They also feel the need to exercise and get the six-pack abs or train for a marathon. It’s non-stop demands that mortal humans can’t meet, and you are a mortal human, so you will never get it all done. So, whether at work, or at home, some work has to be delegated.

 

8. It is Okay to Fail

Failure gets a really bad reputation because of our drive and desire to succeed. However, in the history of inventors, the great products came about only after a number of mistakes and failures. The good thing about failing is that you can figure out what went wrong and improve it to make it work the next time.

Pacemakers used to be huge – the size of televisions. Then Wilson Greatbach made a mistake that revolutionized medicine. When building a heart rhythm recording device, he pulled out the wrong sized resistor and plugged it into the circuit. When it was installed he realized it sounded like a human heartbeat. With some work, he miniaturized the device to two cubic inches. The result was an implantable pacemaker, which has since saved thousands of lives.

Engineers Marc Chavannes and Al Fielding created bubble wrap in 1960 in an attempt to create a trendy new textured wallpaper. This was a total failure, as was a later attempt to market it as housing insulation. When the wrap was eventually used by IBM to package a newly launched computer during transport, it suddenly became an overnight success. Today, few people even realize that bubble wrap began as an abject failure.

 

9. Habit versus Inspiration

While willpower and inspiration do matter in terms of pushing yourself to accomplish your dreams and becoming successful, the right habits will influence whether you’ll survive or not. The important habits of an entrepreneur such as hard work, discipline, and thoroughness can have a direct effect on your finances and lifestyles. When you develop the habit, you can continue doing the action even without thinking twice about it.

 

These wildly successful entrepreneurs are living proof that success is not about being risk-aversive or about taking uncalculated risks. Success lies somewhere between the two. To future-proof your future from disruption, you’re going to have to take some risks – and make some mistakes along the way. When you stumble, knowing how to make your failures work for you will get you out of the slump, even propel you to the next level of possibility and success.

Thursday, 3 July 2025

DO YOUR HANDS GIVE AWAY YOUR AGE?

 


 


Do your hands look old, dark and wrinkled? They are aging with you but they need not give away your age a lot quicker than your face.  If you don't have a youth-preserving plan for the delicate, oft-abused skin and nails on your hands, it'll be a dead giveaway of your age.

 

How are the hands aging?

1.      Age spots: The funny thing about age spots is that they actually have nothing to do with age: Age spots are the result of sun exposure. Short of wearing gloves 24/7, you should be smoothing on a dime-sized dab of hand cream with SPF 30 before heading out the door each day—and reapplying after you wash your hands or every two hours if you're exposed to even a little sunlight. Night application of 2% hydroquinone

2.      Crumpled skin: If the backs of your hands are starting to get a crumpled look reminiscent of gift bag stuffing, use a prescription retinoid cream to improve texture and jumpstart the growth of thickening collagen. Topical application of  lotion containing a retinol or glycolic acid can help.

3.      Prominent veins: Lasers address this problem best and topical applications are not of much use. Sclerosants too are useful.

4.      Scaly skin: Nothing about dry, scaly skin says "young and healthy." Return them to smooth-and-plump status overnight with this quick pre-bed routine:

·        First, slough off rough, dead skin with a gentle scrub

·        then create an all-night moisture mask by smoothing on a glycerin and plant oil-containing hand cream like Elovera Moisturizing Cream

·        cover hands with plastic wrap and putting cotton gloves on top (skip the plastic and you'll just end up with really well moisturized gloves).

5.      Stained nails: If your nails are turning yellow or brown and are painful, then this is a fungal infection. If your doctor rules out fungal infection, you can relax, as the discoloration is likely a harmless side effect of some medication or wearing dark polish. Run your nails with a lemon wedge, just like you would when you're rubbing off nail polish (the natural fruit acids will lighten the nail bed), or soaking in denture cleaner for 15 to 20 minutes to remove the stains. Also make sure to apply a base coat before you reapply your favorite oxblood lacquer.

6.      Brittle nails: Water or chemical exposure, seasonal weather changes, and even genetics, can all lead to brittle, breaking nails. But the right supplements can help. Taking a 2.5 mg dose of the B vitamin biotin improves nail strength and reduces brittleness after six to nine months.

7.      Outdated manicure: Science is constantly changing and your idea of manicure may be outdated. Seek professional help once in a while.

8.      Give up smoking: Smoking tobacco hastens atherosclerosis and hands, and particularly the fingers, being terminal organs are least vascularized and lose the youthful turgor.


How to prevent hand aging?

With proper care, and this handy advice, your hands will keep your age hidden for longer.   

Wash your hands correctly

Too much soap can make your hands dry and flaky, so keep these essential tips in mind:

·        Don't use antibacterial soap unless absolutely necessary. Opt for a moisturizing soap instead (Pears, Dove), such as one with jojoba oil, olive oil or aloe vera.

·        Wash your hands with warm, but not hot water - this will help preserve the natural protective layer. 

·        As opposed to electric dryers, opt for paper towels instead. 

 

Wear gloves

Hands are constantly affected by external factors such as cold, chemicals and dry air. To minimize the damage to your skin, wear gloves as follows:

·        Use leather, fur gloves or mittens for cold weather.

·        Wear rubber or latex gloves for household chores - washing the dishes, mopping floors, cleaning the bathtub etc.

·        Use cloth gloves for gardening.

 

Moisten your hands regularly

Your body needs to stay hydrated to keep each cell and tissue refreshed. Apart from crucial functions like flushing toxins from your body, water also keeps your skin healthy and hydrated from the inside. Dehydrated skin can turn brittle, weak, and thin, eventually leading to wrinkles on your hands. Your aim should be to drink at least eight glasses of water every day.

·        A good hand cream is as crucial as soap or shampoo. Keep these tips in mind:

·       Clip your nails, and purchase a vitamin E cream for the cuticles. 

·        Be sure to drink plenty of water.

·        When the Apply the cream as needed, though no less than twice a day. If your hands are dry, keep hand cream by the sink and apply it after every time you wash your hands. Pick a hand cream that contains glycerin andalpha-hydroxy acids. These are beneficial ingredients that work as humectants to attract moisture from the air to your skin. 

·        Moisturize the room air, turn on the humidifier.

·        Use Emollient - Lack of water can dry the top layer of your skin. It cracks the surface of the skin and leaves spaces between the skin cells. Emollients, or softening agents, fill these empty spaces between your skin cells and make your skin smoother.

 

Remember to scrub

Your hands need scrubbing and masks at least once a week:

·        Make a hand mask from the products you have in your fridge. Mix 20 ml. milk, an egg yolk and a tablespoon of lemon juice, applying it to your hands and letting it rest for 20 minutes. 

·        Use a mix of olive oil and sugar as a scrub.

·        If using a body scrub, apply that to your hands. 

As we age, the skin's natural exfoliation process slows down. Thus, the skin builds up dead skin cells. When we exfoliate our hands with a mild scrub we get rid of dead skin cells. It helps in turn to speed up cellular turnover while softening fine lines and wrinkles on our hands.


Use sunscreen

To protect your hands from the sun, apply a broad-spectrum, water-resistant sunscreen with SPF 30 or higher to your hands every day before going outdoors. Hyperpigmentation following sun exposure can make your hands look older than your age. But this does not occur due to aging or liver dysfunction, but rather, the effect of the sun. To avoid pigment spots do the following: 

·        Regularly apply sunscreen to your hands.

·        Citrus fruits are a good natural 'whitener,' so make a mask out of 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp milk, and 1 tsp honey. 


Use a Retinoid at night

One of the most popular anti-ageing ingredients, retinoids are derived from vitamin A. Retinoid is also the most widely used prescription treatment for wrinkles. Retinoids can increase collagen production in the skin. They also encourage skin regeneration and promote the formation of new blood vessels. Hence, your skin appears smooth, soft, and healthy. Use it only in the night, as sun exposure after applying retinol is not recommended. Pregnant women must avoid it.


Healthy Diet

Maintain a healthy diet with vitamins, antioxidants, and omega-3 fatty acids.


Non surgical hand rejuvenation

1.      For sun spots

·         Cryosurgery (freezing)

·         Laser therapy

·         Chemical peeling

·         Microdermabrasion

·         Skin-lightening creams and lotions

 

2.      For loss of youthful fullness

·        Fillers -   Dermal fillers or soft tissue fillers can be used to reduce wrinkles. These fillers are substances designed to be injected beneath the skin surface to add volume. It also provides fullness and reduces wrinkles temporarily.

·        Fat grafting – fat is aspirated from lower abdomen or thigh and injected under the skin of hand

 

3.      Prominent veins

·        Sclerotherapy - injects a substance into the vein to destroy it. This causes the vein to disappear slowly.

·        Lasers

 

4.      Wrinkled skin

·        Chemical peel – every 1 to 3 months

·        Lasers

 

5.      Loose skin

·        Radiofrequency, a procedure that sends heat deep into the skin, can tighten loose skin. Most people need only one treatment on their hands

·        Lasers

·        Fillers



The clock won’t stop for your hands. You can take action to ensure your hands maintain your desired look and feel. As you age, remember that surgical options like laser therapy, hand lifts, and fillers are always an option to keep your hands looking young. 




Thursday, 26 June 2025

WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THIS TRASH?


 

What do we do with all this trash? With more than 7 billion people consuming, and then disposing of, "stuff" each day, usable space for trash disposal is quickly disappearing. The World Bank estimates that 3 billion people reside within urban areas, producing more than 1.3 billion metric tons of solid waste per year. By 2025 that number is expected to have ballooned to more than 2.2 billion metric tons, forcing governments to task on a garbage problem that many major cities have yet to answer.

 

It is a global problem

It is not a problem of the developing countries only. The Megacities of the world gobble up more water and energy while producing waste astronomically each year. For poor countries, inefficient waste management accelerates the rate of disease as toxins seep into waterways, leading to irreversible environmental pollution.

London churns out too much waste and only 52% goes to recycling. London’s waste disposal companies have increased the recycling rate unburdening the landfill. London’s heavy reliance on primary and secondary industries as the backbone of its economy promotes the consumption of recycled ingredients. The city is blazing the trail in creating a thriving, resilient metro that cuts down waste significantly with a circular economy along with a solid policy framework.

The 7 million perople crammed into Hong Kong's streets produce more than 13,800 metric tons of solid waste a day. That's like tossing an Empire State Building into the waste basket every 27 days. What's worse, of that waste, 3,500 tons-worth comes from scraps of uneaten food, and finding a place to store all of that garbage has proved an insurmountable task. More than 90% of waste is exported for recycling overseas, but that is simply domping poor countries with the waste created by the rich!

One New Yorker dissipates 24 times the electrical energy of a resident in Kolkata, India while spewing 15 times equal solid waste. The city runs a tight ship with aggressive recycling projects that extend outside plastics, paper, and metals to compost food waste. 

Beijing's 20 million plus people produce more than 25,000 tons of garbage a day, a number 4,300 tons beyond what the city can process. The countryside is no better; 40,000 towns and 600,000 villages across the country could not process waste and sewage, leaving more than 300 million tons of waste unprocessed each year.  Chinese government undertook a massive effort to burn trash for energy, constructing hundreds of incinerators to chip away at its trash mountains, but that resulted in large releases of harmful pollutants like dioxin and mercury into the atmosphere.

Manila area produces more than a quarter of all of the garbage in the Philippines, to the tune of nearly 9,000 tons of solid refuse a day. What's worse, only nine of the 16 cities and municipalities that make up the metro Manila area even have a plan to handle all of that waste and 83% og garbage gets collected too.  The trash that does find its way into garbage trucks coalesces into trash cities — towering trash mountains surrounded by shanty towns patrolled by Manila's poorest. Over the years Manila has played host to some of the world's most notorious garbage mountains like Smokey Mountain.

For many years Mexico City's Bordo Poniente held the dubious title of one of the largest landfills in the world. The more than 20 million people of Mexico City's metro area dumped close to 14,000 tons of garbage into the 927 acre site each day. As a result, trash gets dumped everywhere — in rivers, canals, and especially into streets, which are often impassable thanks to the mounds of refuse left behind.

With some 26.7 million people, Jakarta is also one of the world's fastest growing cities. Jakarta produces more than 6,500 tons of waste a day. Most of that waste finds its way to Jakarta's only landfill, Bantar Gebang, a 270 acre trash behemoth that receives 6,250 tons of trash from 800 garbage trucks flowing out of Jakarta each day. The trash clogs waterways during monsoon season, before being sent out into Jakarta Bay and out to sea. 

For hundreds of years the city of Cairo has operated without efficient, government-run trash collection. Instead, for the past 70 years, thousands of trash pickers known as the Zabbaleen have gone door-to-door collecting Cairo's trash for a small fee. The trash-pickers managed to recycle nearly 90 percent of all the garbage that passed through the city, a number that exceeds most Western recycling totals. 

 

The Indian Scenario

India generates 1.7 lakh tons of waste every day. Post Swach Bharat Abhiyan, 90% of the waste is collected and over 54% is processed or treated. Almost 25% of our waste is sent to the sanitary landfills. Now, to this huge man made waste we add the construction and demolition waste, which itself amounts to 15 crore tons a year. If not disposed correctly, which is often the case, it chokes our natural drainage system and cause drains to overflow and monsoon rainwater to cause floods. According to a recent estimate our cities sit atop more than 24 crore tons of legacy waste, spread across 2,400 dumpster, seeping below the surface with every rain, and infecting our groundwater. This leak into our groundwater is called leachate. This is rich in heavy metals, organic pollutants and pathogens contained in the garbage heap. Groundwater near Delhi's Bhalswa landfill has toxic levels of lead and iron and that near Nagpur's Bhandewadi landfill has zinc, copper and cadmium 200% above safe limits. 

New Delhi's tremendous growth has spurned a tremendous growth in refuse, too. The city's solid waste production increased 50 percent over five years, to 9,200 tons of trash a day in 2007, a number that was expected to double by 2024. Three of the four landfills servicing New Delhi are already past capacity, leaving the city starving for additional landfill space. If additional space isn't found these community dumps could spill over into the streets and contribute to a pollution problem that already stretches into the Yamuna river

 

Landfills – a necessary evil

Landfills are necessary for the proper disposal of solid waste. They reduce the amount of waste that makes it into the environment, help to prevent disease transmission, and keep communities clean. However, landfills still have significant environmental and social impact. While landfills are a societal necessity, there are practices that can reduce the reliance on landfills and decrease their effects on the biosphere.

Environmental Impact of Landfills

·         The most pressing environmental concern regarding landfills is their release of methane gas from the decomposition of organic waste. Methane is 84 times more effective at absorbing the sun’s heat than carbon dioxide, making it one of the most potent greenhouse gases and a huge contributor to climate change. 

·         Along with methane, landfills also produce carbon dioxide and water vapor, and trace amounts of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and non methane organic compounds. These gases can also contribute to climate change and create smog if left uncontrolled.  

·         The creation of landfills typically means destroying natural habitats for wildlife.

·         While landfills are required to have plastic or clay lining by federal regulation in the U.S in India these rules are openly flounted. This can result in leachate, a liquid produced by landfill sites, contaminating nearby water sources, further damaging ecosystems. 

·         Leachate can contain high levels of ammonia. When ammonia makes its way into ecosystems it is nitrified to produce nitrate. This nitrate can then cause eutrophication, or a lack of oxygen due to increased growth of plant life, in nearby water sources. Eutrophication creates “dead zones” where animals cannot survive due to lack of oxygen. Along with ammonia, leachate contains toxins such as mercury due to the presence of hazardous materials in landfills.

Social Impact of Landfills

·         Emissions from landfills pose a threat to the health of those who live and work around landfills. A study in New York found that there is a 12% increased risk of congenital malformations in children born to families that lived within a mile of a hazardous waste landfill site.

·         Chronic exposure to leachate contaminated water can cause gastroenteritis, neurological diseases and cancer. 

·         Large landfills, on average, decrease the value of the land adjacent to it. Te quality of life suffers in this region.

·         Landfills bring hazards such as odor, smoke, noise, bugs, and water supply contamination.

·         Minority and low-income areas are more likely to find themselves home to landfills and hazardous waste sites. These areas have fewer resources to oppose the placement of these facilities. This makes them an easier target for landfill placement than higher income areas.

How to avoid landfills

·         Recycle! Continuing to recycle will keep plastic and other materials out of the biosphere and put them to further use!

·         Avoid single-use plastics. Check out this article on single-use plastics and how to avoid them.

·         Compost! Landfills lack the oxygen that compostable items need to fully decompose. By putting biodegradable items into the compost instead of the trash, huge amounts of waste can avoid the landfill.

Landfills help to keep our communities clean, but they also pose serious threats to the health of our environment. Working towards living a zero waste lifestyle will help to reduce our reliance on landfills, their impact on the environment, and their impact on human health and well-being


How do we plan ideal waste management?

It has to be a multi-pronged approach. Waste management should follow the waste hierarchy:

1.      Avoid and reduce waste at the source, starting during the design and procurement phases.

2.      Repair and reuse.

3.      Sort and collect waste separating non-hazardous from hazardous waste.

4.      Recycle.

The treatment and processing system for solid waste include window composting, vermicomposting, pit composting, bio-methanation, organic waste convertors, pelletization, material recovery facilities (MRF), waste to energy plants for electricity generation etc. The ‘waste to energy’ plants are not totally safe as they emit harmful particulate matter in far higher concentration than permissible. So, such plants in Okhla in Delhi and in Jaipur and Hyderabad are not very popular with people living nearby.

So, we should have a proper plan of waste management at every step:

Planning and monitoring

Identify the different types of waste produced, evaluate and record their quantity by volume or weight. Draw up a context-based waste management plan, including sorting, collection, transport, storage, and final disposal. Assess and use local capacities like municipal landfill, informal sector, recycling companies, incineration facilities, etc.

Avoid and Reduce

Encourage procurement and programme teams to avoid and reduce waste at early stage of the project. Evaluate the relevance of each purchase. Engage with suppliers and avoid polluting or single-use items and packaging. Encourage re-usable, recycled, locally repairable and recyclable items with a long lifespan.

Repair and Reuse

Identify items that can be repaired and re-used instead of wasted. Support the necessary infrastructure, for example repair shops, tools or internal workshop. Seek spare parts for the repair process.

Sort and collect

Use separate bins and label them to sort and collect waste. Sort, collect and label hazardous waste separately to avoid any risk or contamination. Adapt the sorting to the existing local recycling opportunities (textile, paper, metals, glass, informal and formal sectors etc). Explore opportunities to mutualise collecting and storage with other actors. Bulk waste generators like malls, hotels, hostels, hospitals must compost and segregate on site. Every ward should have its own compost and segregation site and GPS tagged bins and mobile alerts should be used to track garbage collection.

Recycle

Work with local recycling companies and create employment opportunities. Consider influencing and supporting local governments and decision-makers to improve the recycling infrastructure. Recycled products like tiles, road base material, and prefabricated blocks must be popularised.

Treatment and final disposal

Identify and use legally approved local or regional disposal channels (composting, burial, sealing, controlled landfill, incineration…). Visit the site regularly. Establish partnerships (e.g., incineration in cement plants, energy recovery opportunities) and mutualize equipment like compost pits or collaborate with other actors (NGO’s, health structures, local governments, etc.). Incineration must be disintentivised to avoid contaminating the air with particulate matters.

Staff engagement and Sensitization

Raise staff awareness across all departments and involve them in avoiding waste, sorting, reusing, choosing long lifespan items, and reducing packaging.

 

The onus of mindful waste management cannot be the sole responsibility of the government. Public engagement must be strengthened by teaching waste literacy in schools and colleges, awareness campaigns by icons of the society and celebrating champions of zero waste living.