Garbage management starts with households

A clean city is a strong reflection of our moral and civic values. But clean cities do not just come by chance. They require much responsibility and dedication to maintain, not only by the authorities, but also by the citizens of the city.

“Daily, tons of garbage is generated in the city. There has been an enormous increase in the density of population, which has brought in its wake a ten-fold rise in garbage quantity. Sometimes they are openly burnt emitting dangerous gases that cause severe health hazards. The households have to develop a habit of generating less garbage, be it the use of tissue paper or plastic bags carrying half a kg of sugar,” says Rasheed Turabi.

“It is also advisable that city citizens need to change their thinking, take it upon themselves to follow proper garbage disposal guidelines and not just expect the municipal authorities to do the entire job themselves. The city administration need to exhort the people to take it upon themselves the task of keeping their neighbourhood and the city environs clean and litter-free, rather than always leaving the same to the civic body,” says Kalbe Razi.

Hussain Bakshs says: “The problem of littering lies with city folk’s callous attitude. Even when there is a dustbin in plain sight, no one bothers to use it. Wrappers are strewn on the sidewalk, banana peels fly out of rolled-down windows of cars, and straws are dropped nonchalantly on the streets or footpaths, as are plastic drinking cups.”

“Empty sites are taken as garbage-dumping sites. Just flip that garbage over the fence, no one is watching, is city residents’ thinking. They all keep their houses clean. But when they walk out of the four walls, their attitude towards cleanliness does not translate to keeping the streets clean, not dumping garbage in the neighbor's empty site, and not dropping garbage on the streets wherever one feels like it,” says Safdar Hussain.

“Human nature tells us that unless there are consequences attached to bad behaviors; it will be more difficult to change that behavior. As such successful civic campaigns must be launched with appropriate level of enforcement,” says Mehdi Shah.

Adeel Hussain says: “In terms of global or even Asian standards, our city is not clean. There is still the sight of overflowing dustbins on the streets, the disordered dumping yards around the residential areas and garbage burning on the streets”.

“We just need to look around. The key issue is that the change for better won’t happen, if we ourselves don’t see the actions to be taken to prevent the tragedy to continue and getting even worse. We the citizens carry the power of change,” says Ghulam Ali.