The Trouble with Rubbish

The trouble with rubbish in India is what to do with it. For any environmentally conscious traveler, India proves aggravating. It can be humorous at times. In a Varanasi internet cafe, a tourist holding a piece of garbage looked around diligently for a rubbish bin, and finally asked the shopkeeper. He took the piece of garbage and threw it out the door into the alleyway. For Indians, the place for garbage is down. Get rid of it as soon as you are finished with it. In the city of Varanasi, it's funny because the garbage seemingly disappears. A wallah (worker) comes along with a hand cart and carts the rubbish away from the back alleys. I'm not sure where he takes it out of the back alleyways. Perhaps it gets tossed in the Holy Ganga. Perhaps it gets taken to some of the piles of rotting rubbish I saw on one of the main streets. I even saw what seemed to be a landfill of sorts along the river. Along the bigger streets there, the practice seemed to be to put rubbish in the road, let the cows pick through it, and light it afire. Most everyplace in India seems plagued with toxic fumes from rubbish fires. Plastics even get thrown into cooking fires! Yum!

Two years ago in Rishikesh, some travelers told how their guest house had signs proclaiming "Throw your rubbish in the bins." One evening they saw the housekeeper from the guest house emptying the rubbish bins into the river.

In Varanasi, one young man suggested going to Bangalore, where not only do they have rubbish bins, but they know how to use them!

In several places like Sikkim, Ladakh, and Badrinath, I've seen signs saying "ban plastic bags". A brilliant idea, except that even if the plastic shopping bags are not used, there is no end to the plastic packets of candy, tobacco, soaps, etc... that manufactured items are sold in. Enterprising capitalists have realized that they can package most any consumable in a small dose and pedal it for a few ruppees to millions of Indians. Laundry detergent, candies, chewing tobacco, shampoo... you name it... can be purchased in a single use/dose sachet. And the wrapper ends up on the ground.

It's ashame. On the other side there is some marvelous recycling and compostable wrappers being used. Independent food vendors make and sell such things as popcorn, butter cookies, snacks, etc and fold up little bags out of newspaper. It's so ingenious! And the paper at least will rot somewhat quickly on the ground. Sometimes unkilned clay vessels are used for tea, yogurt, etc. And the used vessel can just be thrown on the ground. Many times shopkeepers will wrap your purchase in newspaper. It's quite brilliant. Unfortunately, it's slowly disappearing with the marketing of plastic cups, containers, bags, etc.

Last week I was hiking near Badrinath and ran into some locals and sat with them as we enjoyed our packets of manufactured biscuits (sweet cookies/crackers). They threw their wrapper on the ground. I put mine in my pocket to take it to my guesthouse, where conspicuously there was no rubbish pail in my room. I laughed at my predicament. I realized that my small pile of rubbish in my room would likely end up in the river. Was it better to leave the biscuit wrapper on the mountain trail? I considered, that I could take it back to Rishikesh with me. Where it would just end up further downstream in the same river. I fantasized about taking it to Delhi, where maybe there was some sort of proper landfill... as if that is much better. Or even carting it back to the U.S. on a fossil fuel spewing jet, to be laid to rest in an potentially even more proper landfill. I left my rubbish in the guesthouse in Badrinath. And realized the best policy would be not to buy anything wrapped in rubbish.