Aafrin Kidwai 
This morning, a fellow resident in my building, posted this picture (shared above) of her segregated plastic waste bundled up in a big bag, waiting to be collected by our Society’s housekeeping staff. In her What’s App post, she wondered if it was being disposed of the way it should. “I collect the plastic and give it to housekeeping every week or once in two weeks. It is not soiled and ready to recycle. But what happens once it leaves our house, is not in our hands and we don’t know.”
Now, ours is a huge residential complex in suburban Mumbai. Our housing society has been pretty proactive in the past about waste segregation. However, the current pandemic has brought everything to a halt. Like ours, many other housing societies across the country have discontinued dry and waste segregation in the backdrop of the coronavirus, citing health concerns for their housekeeping staff.
Indeed, overseeing segregation of potentially COVID-infected waste poses a major challenge for housing societies. We need to unite and come up with safety protocols, with the support of local civic authorities.
As responsible citizens, we all need to pay attention to how we segregate waste, collect and dispose it safely. I came across this useful video by TERI (see below), which explains domestic waste segregation at home in the simplest terms. Start segregating, if you don’t already, and spread the word, not the virus!
