Problem Statement: How to prevent and manage garbage from being thrown on the roads
The walk started around 5:30 p.m. at 20/9/16 with my classmate. The location was outside of Bollineni Hillside, at the Semmancheri Road, near the slum areas.
The area was in complete contrast to the Bollineni Hillside as there was so much garbage carelessly thrown around on the sides of the road outside of Bollineni.
After walking a distance we met Hari Rama Krishna(male), a security officer, aged 53, working at Bollineni. He also told us that the difference between Bollineni and outside Bollineni was remarkable in terms of littering. He told us that the main reason for garbage was the careless attitude of the people living in slums. But he told us that it was also partially the fault of the government as they too were careless as they usually they never came on time to pick the garbage. He suggested the idea of fining people who litter, and this idea may have considerable impact in terms of garbage being disposed carelessly.
As we walked on the road, we could see garbage everywhere. There was garbage in water, near plants, near shops, everywhere. The pungent smell was very overpowering in the area. We then made it to a police station to find their opinion and suggestions for this problem.
M.Murugan(male), a police officer of age 48, deemed that the main reason of littering in the area was due to the shops in the area. According to him littering was already banned but shopkeepers threw garbage at midnight, when the police couldn’t monitor them. The problem originated in this area when a slum was built for workers around 5 years ago and ever since the problem has been going on ever since. He also tell us that the Slum Board is responsible and they also mostly try to make everyone dispose their waste properly. He told us that we were the first people to ask him about this problem. M.Murugan suggested us a solution, in which one should go to the shopkeepers who are littering and tell them to stop, or else a petty case or a nuisance case will be booked against them at court. He explained that a petty case can be booked since they are throwing garbage in the open instead of dustbins. He told us that the main problem to why there is a lot of garbage is that most of the government officials often neglect this problem.
Then we walked a distance and we could see some puppies and cows eating from the trash. We then realised that throwing garbage is just not harmful to humans, but it can also be potential danger to various animals.
And after that we walked back to Bollineni, and as M.Murugan rightly said, there was more garbage next to shops than anywhere else.
We then went to ask Shawal (male) of age 43, who works at a tailor shop, of his views on careless garbage disposal. He tells us that the main reason to the problem is because of the public. Most of the people do not keep trash in their homes as they are worried that their homes would smell, therefore they dump the trash outside. Another reason is that many animals also spread around the trash in the name of eating. Also another main reason is that the government management is not proper, since the government, which is supposed to collect trash every once in two days, now collects one a month, which makes the waste accumulate.
He tells us that he along with others are very much affected by the garbage in many ways. One such way is: that due to garbage being accumulated in water, a safe haven for breeding mosquitoes is created. This leads rise to dengue, malaria, chikungunya, yellow fever, filariasis,et al. This further leads to hospital bills which causes huge losses.
He thinks that a good solution can be to make the public change their ways of disposing trash. And he also thinks that the government too must change their ways to make a cleaner environment a reality.
We then interviewed Bhavesh, a software engineer of age 40. He told us that the garbage ruins the beauty of nature. He also told us that there no dust bins present which makes it hard for people to dispose the garbage, and he also told that many people are not educated and there must be more awareness about segregating waste into the right bins as some people do not know this and they throw random things in recycle bins.He suggested that the government setting up bins in these areas will help in solving the problem.
