Waste Management at the Village Level

Rathod Shyam Sunder, April 2017

 

India is one of the country where majority of its population lives in the rural areas. The energetic India or Healthy India should be developed from the bottom. As we know that the world is facing major climatic changes and if the same scenario continues there may be a problem to existence of human life. The waste management in India is in lukewarm stage. We have seen tonnes of waste that have been dumped at various dumpsites without proper segregating, discharge of untreated water by the Industries releasing into the rivers, vehicular emissions etc all these have caused environmental concerns. So to change this destruction pattern there should be effective plan to be drafted which can be started from the Ground-Level and can make the example for towns and cities for taking up initiatives.

Village needs to redesign its waste management mechanism and segregation of the waste should be into the Solid and Liquid. As we know solid waste divided into renewable and non renewable waste like Plastic, Liquid consists of food waste etc. The team for the collection of waste should be initiated by the Gram Sabha, so there can be regular check in the waste collection. The team can be comprised of below members:

1. Village Sarpanch 
2. Youth Members between the age group of 18-21 based on their education (4-5 members not close associates of Sarpanch) 
3. Women Members team 
4. Farmers Club 
5. Waste Management Recycle Team 

The Food waste can be turned out into the Organic manure. So it can be utilized in the Agriculture Fields, this can automatically reduce the expenditure of the farmers on fertilizers and starts a trend towards sustainable development. The Cow dung in the village can be collected for starting Bio Gas plant and also can be used for vermin-composting or providing nutrition for the cow by adding additives to it. To make it possible the waste management team can make farmers club aware of these things and transfer knowledge to their co-farmers, this can make effective utilization of resources at that level itself.

The Plastics collected in the villages can be redirected to the NGO’s so it can be used in road making material. The curtailment of plastic can be done through regular making active involvement of women members, school children making regular awareness to village people regarding bad impacts of it. It can also be reduced by reusing the same plastic for several intervals instead of taking every time new cover.

The Dust Bin should be placed across the villages with two colours side by side like green and Red, marking green as renewable and red as non-renewable by using pictures so there can be easily identified by the layman.

The most important thing is to go through the sanitation condition regularly. Each house should have a proper underground drainage system and stored in one common area in the village, so there can be recycle of waste can happen and the recycled water can be used for various purposes like flushing toilets or for washing floors, yards or roads & gardening and these routine activities doesn’t require fresh water.  

To stop open defecation in the village first of all the committee members should construct toilets in their homes and set the example for the villagers. Later a participatory campaign has to be organized in the village to involve all the village people to discuss the problems related to open defecation and make people with the help of government to construct Toilets at their homes. To learn how to use toilets, panchayat can show movies related to usage of toilet. The members who use Toilets regularly for defecation should be felicitated by giving small rewards. The Regular follow up should be done by the committee members especially by the youth members, women members so there can minimize open defecation.

The village completely prospers when its people and the environment is clean. This can be only possible when each and every villager in societal conscious or ecologically concerned, collective of all the people.

When there is both inner and outer cleanliness, it approaches godliness

- Mahatma Gandhi