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29/12/2017 - 09:00

The controversial Timarpur-Okhla incineration plant in New Delhi could serve as an example of why incineration is not the answer to Chennai's solid waste problem.

13/12/2017 - 09:24

Imagine opening one of your drawers on a typical office day and discovering to your horror a used sanitary napkin lying there. This is a scene in a promotional video created for a better sanitary waste management system in Pune. Its message is clear: it would be unpleasant for you to discover a blood-soaked sanitary pad in your workplace so why force waste pickers to undergo this?

07/12/2017 - 09:00

Amassing the dailies, monthlies and squeezed-till-I-have-made-sure-I-can’t-extract-more-paste toothpaste tubes/shampoo bottles and such other ’junk’, in one end of the cabinet (whose other end was often a concealed shoe rack for the slightly pricier ones) is a common practise in a middle-class household. Well, at least in mine, it still is.

04/12/2017 - 18:39

The issue of flooding has been the greatest concern among residents of Chennai over the last two monsoon cycles. Drains choked with plastic bags and shrinking open spaces cause water to stagnate on the roads with the lightest of rains. Besides the flooding, the cycle continues with the dangerous aedes aegypti mosquito making its home in stagnant water sources.

01/11/2017 - 15:52

Chennai’s Waste Management Crisis

31/07/2017 - 18:21

In January 2017, I joined CAG, specifically to work on solid waste management (SWM) projects. I started with the Mapping Waste Trails project, which aims to gain a better understanding of the lives of the informal waste pickers engaged in waste recycling in Chennai. Furthermore, we will be tracking the movements of certain recyclables, to ascertain the routes by which such materials traverse the city-scape, and the value added within each step in the routes.

25/07/2017 - 18:09

The last day of the Break Free From Plastics meeting was kept for communications. How can we be more effective in getting across our stories to citizens, governments, and corporates? This session was led by Dancing Fox, a group that works to “help change makers tell their story, and help storytellers change the world”.

20/07/2017 - 22:23

On the third day of the four-day Break Free From Plastics meeting, we started with an overview of the link between climate, oil and plastics. That the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal, leads to carbon emissions, which have caused a rapid change in the climate is well established. But what is the link between plastics and climate?

19/07/2017 - 22:42

Day 2 of the Break Free From Plastics meeting in Bali picked up pace quite rapidly. Where Day 1 aimed to set the expectations of the meeting and looking back at the recent past, today we looked at the various actions and strategies that are underway or planned for the coming 18 months. The conversation was anchored in four key questions, one each for the key themes that emerged from the previous day.