Back To Waste Basics

Urban food discards were also recognised as a potential resource, not a waste. In Portuguese Goa, bullock carts would move from bungalow to bungalow, collecting kitchen leftovers for on-farm composting. This was the earliest Indian version of doorstep waste collection. In big cities like Bangalore, farmers would bring their produce to town for early-morning auctions, then move to the cement-ring waste bins at street corners and empty them to take back home and produce manure. In fact, they would fight over collection rights for this fertile resource. This age-old practice kept Indian soils rich in carbon, up to 4 per cent. All this changed with the beginning of the plastic era in the 1970s. Some readers will recall how plastic bags were initially cherished as a useful item for hoarding in our homes, carefully taken out for re-use when needed. As the bags became more common, poor quality, and disposable, we began throwing them away into our kitchen waste-bins. When farmers took such mixed waste to their farms, the fields wore a non-biodegradable plastic film, preventing rain from entering the soil and keeping seeds from germinating through them — an example of negative urban-rural connectivity.