Environmental awareness is a HUGE problem across the globe, so it makes me smile whenever I see little reminders to be green scattered across India.  I haven’t always had my camera, but here are some of my favorites for your viewing pleasure!

Once I got into the habit of snapping photos of signs, these funny ones also caught my eye…enjoy!

As some of you know, the Advocacy Project has been working with its fellows and partner organizations all over the world to create Advocacy Quilts! Thus, one of my projects with Chintan is to initiate the program here, and complete at least one quilt made by waste-pickers to contribute. There are high aspirations for the final product, so keep following as this story unfolds over the next few weeks!

Background:

An Advocacy Quilt is a creative and thoughtful way for members of a marginalized community to showcase their struggles, triumphs, and emotions. Advocacy Project has successfully completed Advocacy Quilts with individual programs around the world and each quilt reflects the unique community that constructed it. This initiative was started to give communities a chance to communicate with the world through their art, and in many instances, such as with victims of sexual assault and survivors of the Srebrenica massacre, the artists find the process of making the quilt cathartic. The quilt also gives the advocacy groups associated with the communities a chance to use a tangible representation of first-hand accounts when reaching out to the general public.

Here are some excellent examples of previous quilts and the heartwarming stories that accompany them:

Bosfam Weavers for Hope:

Survivors of Sexual Violence in the Congo:

LOVE Blanket Project with Child Laborers in Nepal:

Waste-Picker Quilt with Chintan: Chintan hopes to join the ranks of the organizations to successfully promulgate a quilt, and I am helping make this a reality. This quilt will be different from many of the other quilts that have been produced because we have decided to only use materials from the community. This means that all of the fabric for the quilt came from one of the waste-picker slums and was previously discarded by someone else! Here are some pictures of my expedition to Bopura to gather the fabric,

The children were very helpful at picking out some of the cleaner pieces! 

Weighing the fabric…

Transporting the fabric back to the office…

Tomorrow is my first day in the field specifically for the quilt – I will be working with Chintan’s No Child in Trash Program (wish me luck!). I will ask the children to draw pictures (with fabric markers) about where they live, where they go to school, and what their parents do for a living. After they are finished drawing they will be interviewed to explain their art, so check back soon for some of the videos. This is the first time that a quilt is being made with fabric paint, instead of embroidery, and so we will see how it turns out. I foresee that this quilt may not be as (traditionally) beautiful as some of the others because of the fabric being used and the age group of the participants, but it will represent the community at large and will therefore be an excellent tool for advocacy.

In Delhi, trash is part of the day-to-day reality; it’s on the streets, it’s in the rivers, it’s everywhere. Since this is not the reality I experience in the United States, it would be easy for me to divorce the waste management issues I see in Delhi as solely being India’s issue, but that would be a mistake. In fact, waste is one of the few things that ALL humans have in common. We may not see trash, but don’t be fooled! Issues related to waste management are rampant in the US as well. Here are some interesting articles about waste-related issues that caught my attention!

- According to this Grist article, half of the litter in the San Francisco Bay area comes from fast food!

- This New York Times article describes a conflict between affluent Upper East Side residents and nearby residents in a less affluent area about where to locate a waste transfer station. The article details how waste transfer stations are disproportionately located in low income areas and the class conflict that this breeds.

-There are new electronic waste rules for North and South Carolina that are outlined in this Huffington Post article. I found this one particularly interesting because the other Chintan intern, Abby, is working on India’s new e-waste rules because lots of e-waste is exported to India where waste-pickers work with it in abismal conditions.

- This Grist article describes how Austin, Texas could become the first city to have a no-packaging grocery store! If people generate less trash, then waste management becomes more manageable, and landfills don’t fill up as quickly. People often forget that with waste management comes questions about consumption (and over consumption) patterns.

- For those of you who are business minded, this article in the Sustainable Business Forum overviews how sustainability is essential for “high performing supply chains.” The article quotes an excellent paper written in the European Financial Review by Dr. Chris Laszlo and Dr. Nadya Zhexembayeva (authors of a new book Embedded Sustainability: The Next Big Competitive Advange):

“the linear throw-away economy, in which products and services follow a one-way trajectory from extraction to use and disposal, can no longer be supported, as we are simply running out of things to unearth and place to landfill. Consumers, employees, and investors are beginning to demand socially and environmentally-savvy products without compromise, while radical transparency is putting every company under a microscope.”

Another issue that is intimately tied to waste management is water pollution. If you haven’t heard of the Pacific Ocean Garbage patch, read this. To give an overview, the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch is literally an aquatic landfill approximately the size of Texas (some estimates are much larger) that was discovered in the Pacific Ocean. Some say that this is the largest landfill in the world, and to think – it happened by accident. Trash from all over the world entered waterways where it just floated along and followed natural currents. These natural currents trapped the garbage in a large gyre, and created the landfill. The majority of garbage in the Pacific Ocean Garbage patch is plastic, read about the effects that plastic has on the ecosystem here.

Despite the size of this issue, it is still relatively unknown so Plastiki (a boat made entirely of plastic bottles) and crew set sail across the Pacific in 2010 to raise awareness. Read more about this incredible journey here.

So remember, even though you aren’t in Delhi with me looking at the trash on the streets – you can still be learning about waste management and waste related issues. Just because you don’t see the problem doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that you aren’t unknowingly contributing. Here are some things you can do:

1) Stop using plastic bags because there is really no excuse to be using plastic bags anymore. Delhi has actually banned them to help with it waste management problems. If people in Delhi can do it everyday, you can too. Yes it takes a few times to remember to bring your reusable bags to the store, but here in Delhi if you don’t have them you have to buy new ones! Try holding yourself to that model and you’ll learn quickly.

2) Find out where your trash goes. Ask some questions about which transfer station your garbage goes to so that you can be more aware about space limitations and other issues. In MA we bring our trash directly to the transfer station (rather then have trash pickup) and that is certainly a cool place to go. If you haven’t ever been to a transfer station, it’s worth a visit.

3) Recycle. If you recycle, then those materials do not end up in the garbage, and ultimately end up being reused rather then going to a landfill or the ocean. If you have to use plastic water bottles, make sure to recycle them!

4) Vote for environmentally aware politicians on the local, state, and federal levels. With the presidential election coming up, make sure to consider the environment when selecting your candidate.

Read any good articles or have tips of your own? Post them in the comments!

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a ribbon cutting for one of Chintan’s schools. The school is the most recent addition to Chintan’s “No Child in Trash” program, and is made from entirely re-usable materials. The school itself is beautiful and is a beacon of hope for the community, not to mention one of the only buildings with electric fans on the premises.

When I talked to the 3 teachers for some 60 students, some of the challenges that the No Child in Trash (NCIT) initiative confronts daily became evident. For instance, the children are all extremely different - they are different ages, they speak different languages, and they have had different levels of exposure to education - which complicates the single classroom setup. Many of the waste-pickers are immigrants and only speak Bengali or another regional language, so the students find themselves learning Hindi and English at the Chintan schools. Further, while this school itself is wonderful, the facilities are still extremely basic. Specifically, there are no floors. The children and teachers alike sit on thin carpets that barely contain the dirt beneath them. Remember how hard it was to pay attention to the teacher in school? Now try image paying attention with a rock sticking into your behind.

Here is a short video that includes some community reactions to the new school

At the event, I had way too much fun pretending to be a professional photographer; here are some of the most powerful images from the afternoon; to view the abridged set of photos, click through to my Flickr page here!

You would never realize it from the number of photos I ended with, but I was very hesitant to take pictures. It was my first time with the community and I didn’t want to intrude by taking photos of people’s homes and children. I was also extremely uncomfortable about potentially promoting my own version of “slum tourism” after reading an insightful and articulate blog by Kristen Maryn, an AP Fellow in Nairobi, Kenya. However, after a few hours and some rough translation, the camera came out and stayed. Parents actually asked me to take pictures with their children, and the kids were giddy when they saw their picture on the digital screen. Many of the residents actually took out their cell phones and started taking pictures of me! If it goes both ways, it can’t be that bad? Right?

What do you think, would you ever be a “slum tourist” and pay to see poverty? Would it matter if you became a “better” person after the experience? I highly recommend Kristen’s blog, and the articles that she linked, for some interesting perspectives. Here are the links again for your convenience: Kristen’s blog, “Slumdog Tousism” - NYT, “Rich, Famous, and Living in a Slum” -Wall Street Journal, and “Poverty as Entertainment” - Daily Nation.

Delhi personifies the cliche, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” In fact, for many in Delhi, trash transcends the frivolity of most treasures and provides the means to harness basic needs such as food, water, and shelter. Who are the waste-pickers? Simply put, they are the individuals, families, and communities who thrive off of materials that others deem useless.

The process is fairly straight forward. First, the average person discards materials, maybe into a trash can (although public trash cans are extremely rare), onto the street, or into a household dumpster. Waste-pickers come around and collect the garbage (sometimes off the street, other times from knocking on doors) and haul it away in a cart that is pulled via a bicycle, and bring it to a designated area to be sorted. Yes, that is a Dominos box.

Cycle Rickshaw for Trash Collection. This particular Rickshaw was provided by Chintan as part of the door-to-door waste collection initiative.

This is a designated area for sorting on the side of a busy road.

Once the waste is sorted into plastics, papers, and compostables, the waste-picker sells the materials. An extremely successful waste-picker can earn around 150 rupees a day  freelancing (about $3 USD).

This system not only provides a livelihood for millions of people, but it also ensures that materials are recycled. In this respect, Delhi has a more advanced waste management system (albeit imperfect) then the United States, because only materials with no remaining use end up in landfills. Consider the copious amounts of recyclables/compostables that end up in U.S. landfills because of general carelessness; these materials contribute to our carbon footprint instead of being put to a beneficial use.

This is an extremely oversimplified version of what goes on around Delhi, as there are complex procedures for the sorting and selling of waste, especially E-Waste (electronic waste); however this description captures the essence of what occurs all around this major metropolis. Remember, this entire process is done without any help, oversight, or input from the government – which means that waste-pickers comprise the informal sector and receive very few legal rights. This also means that the government does not provide municipal waste pickup for households or businesses … personally, I would not want to imagine what would happen to the (already littered) Delhi streets and rivers if the informal sector failed to absorb the waste.

Where does Chintan fit in?

Chintan has five major initiatives to help support the waste-pickers and their essential function. It is important to note that although this profession may not be desirable to many of us, Chintan does not seek to change the profession itself, but rather improve the inadequate  working conditions; for example, Chintan seeks to create more substantial sorting areas, specific rules for the disposal of hazardous waste, and to provide sanitary equipment for workers at affordable prices. The five initiatives are:

1) Voice for Waste: This program creates focus groups of waste-pickers that discuss issues, policy decisions, and potential campaigns to improve their profession.

2) Low Carbon Future: This program works with bulk waste producers such as malls, offices, and businesses to “green” their systems. In addition to requiring a reduction of waste creation, Chintan helps to manage the waste that is created by contracting it to specific waste-pickers. This ensures that it is thoroughly sorted and also provides a stable income for some of the waste-pickers.

3) No Child in Trash: This initiative helps educate the children of waste-pickers in informal schools that Chintan builds (with the help of sponsors) so that the children can eventually join the formal education system, or at least have enough of an education to make substantial choices about their future.

Informal school at the Gaziapur landfill.

4) Scavengers to Managers: This program communicates with neighborhoods and arranges for waste-pickers to come for door-to door collection. This means that a waste-picker will have a set number of houses in a set area, as opposed to scavenging whatever possible. Chintan serves as the middle man between the communities and the waste-pickers because each household pays a monthly rate to Chintan which in turn pays the waste-pickers a salary.

5) Knowledge Power: This initiative focuses on researching problems that waste-pickers face in order to best inform which policy platforms Chintan supports.

I hope this overview is helpful, I myself am still learning about all the complexities surrounding this issue so please let me know if I can answer any questions!

Hindi word of the day: acha = good

Today marks the one-week anniversary of my arrival in Delhi! Although I was nervous about how I would acclimate, it couldn’t be better. The weather was probably my biggest concern, as it usually hovers around 105F, but since my arrival I have survived a day that was 111F and learned to drink about 3 liters of water before dinner to help deter heat exhaustion. Now that I’ve been here a week, I also feel comfortable saying that Delhi is a carb-o-holic’s dream city. I can’t get enough of the rava masala dosa, paneer nann, and butter nann. When I take a break from the bread and potatoes, it’s usually for sweets, which lead to the (un)fortunate instance when I tried to order two scoops of ice cream, only to be served two separate, but equally wonderfully, ice cream cones.

My accommodation is fantastic – I’m walking distance from my office, a Café Coffee Day, the Central Market, and the metro station. The market is potentially dangerous because I’ve already purchased two scarves (which are obviously necessary in this climate) and my coffee addiction has not wavered. At my house there is also a resident stray cat with kittens (she lives on the roof) but I avoid her because I saw her carrying a rat up the stairs yesterday. With the monsoon coming, I’m curious to see if I will be able to continue to walk around so freely.

My Accommodation

From my balcony, I have an excellent view of a little green area where yesterday I saw some men lowering a steel beam with only a pulley system and their feet. This picture doesn’t capture the ingenuity.

This is the green area across the street from my accomodation, look closely and see a man on the right holding a basic pulley system to lower that steel beam.

Additionally, my housemates and colleagues are fantastic. Abby and Laura are interns at Chintan with me, so click through for their blogs. Make sure to give them some comment love! While you’re at it, “Like” Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group on Facebook – one of my projects is to expand the visibility of this page and possibly create one for the waste-pickers to update themselves, but more on my projects at a later date.

Delhi is just like any other rapidly developing city, but a few things did surprise me. First, the metro has a “ladies only” car. At first I didn’t understand the appeal of the segregation, but then I experienced what can only be called a stampede of commuters rushing on and off the train. It is not taboo to push; in fact, good luck trying to get off the metro car without pushing or being pushed. The process is fairly dramatic and I can understand how women, especially with small children, prefer not to get trampled. This setup also allows for a small safety net after dark, which gives women who travel alone to feel a little more secure in the infamous Delhi evenings. I have really come to appreciate this car’s presence.

I was also surprised that I have to get a pat-down every time I enter the metro, just like at the airport. There is also an xray machine. Lastly, I was surprised to find that most people work at least every other Saturday. Many individuals at my office work long hours and rarely have a day off! Not my favorite Delhi tradition.

Check back soon

Hindi phrase of the day: queseho? How are you?

I have successfully made it to Delhi and I started work right away! I arrived in the middle of the night and then worked the following day and all through the weekend because Chintan was very busy for World Environment Day, which meant that I was thrown right into the action.

Chintan’s main event occurred at a luxury mall about 45min from the office, and involved asking patrons to sign pledges on leaf stickers to support the environment. After they were signed, the leaves were placed onto two baron trees. By the end of the three days both trees were full of pledges!

This event was purely for outreach and did not specifically involve Chintan’s work with waste-picker communities. Despite the decent amount of patron participation, it was clear that both the staff and the patrons were split on the effectiveness of such an event. I was asked by one man if “I thought I was making a difference” and another asked me “Do you really think people will follow this pledge? What is the point?” While others were overjoyed to take a pledge and took pictures with the trees.

These skeptics echoed my own interpretation of event, and brought up important questions about how to best raise awareness for environmental issues. What do you think, do outreach events such as this really work?

Despite my skepticism the pledge signing was a huge success! People seemed to love the activity of placing a leaf on the tree to make it come alive, and the basil planting was a huge hit. Below is a short film about my three days at the mall that includes some great pictures and interviews. Enjoy!

Welcome to my blog! Over the next few weeks, I will be writing about life as an Advocacy Project Peace Fellow with the Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group in New Delhi, India. I will mostly explore issues that make Chintan’s work so pertinent and meaningful, but I will also throw in my general impressions of New Delhi and the occasional embarrassing anticdote. I can’t guarantee that I will be interesting, but I will have fun trying!

In case you haven’t heard me going on about Chintan, here is a brief overview. Chintan was founded in 1999 to empower individuals who earn a living off of waste. These people comprise the informal waste management sector of Delhi that is essential for the city’s day-to-day function, however they face adversity because of discrimination and poverty. Chintan seeks to legitimize their role in society and reduce this adversity by promoting their human rights, waste efficiency, and overall environmental sustainability.

This fellowship would not have become a reality without the overwhelmingly positive responses I received over the past few weeks. Thus, this first blog post is dedicated to everyone who supported me through this process, please know how grateful I am. I can’t believe I was able to reach my fund raising goal, find a place to live, and make countless contacts in the span of weeks solely based on the  knowledge and generosity of family, friends, and a few special strangers. This kindness has not been taken lightly and I would love it if you all would stay in touch – check back here for more blog entries, videos, and photos! I will work my hardest to not only have a positive fellowship experience, but also to do good while I am here.

The issues central to this fellowship are new to me so please feel free to comment, share your insight, ask questions, or start a dialogue so we can embark on this journey together. If this issue is also new to you, these resources may be helpful, Chintan’s website and blogs from previous fellows Ted Mathys, Jacqui Kotyok, Paul Colombini and Mackenzie Berg.

I will be leaving for India in 24 hours and I couldn’t be more excited. Not much more to say now – just finalizing everything, pre-departure jitters, and remembering to do one task at a time. Will post back soon!