Walking probe Methods assignment Sanchit Soni
Map taken from: https://snazzymaps.com/style/79/black-and-white under educational fair use only
Details Team I chose Ujala to work with for this project. We both live at Park Doral, 7th Street. Location We chose to walk around Marsh supermarket which is on the 3rd, took a turn towards Jiffy Treat and then walked back to our apartments, Park Doral. (see map) Time and day We started at 11:15 am till about an hour, on Sunday, February 26. Our topics of conversation Litter in the US vs Asia, how waste management works, people’s perception towards waste. trash as an economy etc.
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Me and Ujala Qasim.
Dumpsters at S Pete Ellis Dr
At the beginning Ujala started talking about how clean the country is, compared to her home country of Pakistan. I could resonate with her in the sense that India also happens to be almost equally dirty. In South Asia, it is okay for people to throw their stuff around and litter, without thinking about the repercussions. So when she sees litter in the US, she is immediately able to spot them, as litter is scarce. Also, when she spots it, she starts thinking about the perspective of the person who must have thrown away the stuff and what must have been going in his/her mind? Was is the same mentality that it is okay to litter around, like people in India and Pakistan?
A child car seat in near perfect condition
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Dumpster near Kingston Manor apartments
While she thought that US is doing a good job of trash collection and how the country appears to be very clean, I told her that it is only one part of the loop, the other part is, segregating and recycling trash, which does not happen at the scale it should be happening. There is a lot of resource within trash which could be reused, recycled or upcycled, but people do not realize that.
A thrown away food box from Rally’s
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Recycling and reusing in not a part of culture it seems. I gave her an example of a perfectly fine pasta sauce glass jar, which could be reused to keep other food items. All you have to do is to wash it and dry it. But most people who just throw away stuff like that and buy separate containers and glass jars to keep stuff.
Left: Dumpster near Kingston Manor apartments Bottom: Bed mattresses thrown straight into the dumpster
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We also discussed about a very interesting concept which is prevalent in India and Pakistan. You can basically sell your trash and make money out of it. There are these small sweat shops and trash collectors on the wheels, who would buy trash from your by the kilos, and give you cash. So mostly people stock their trash, such as newspapers, glass bottles, metal scraps and other kind of plastic items, which they would later sell to Raddiwala or Kabadiwala. It is a wonderful example of waste economy.
Top, right and bottom: A discarded plastic bottle thrown right in front of yard sign for property lease
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A trash bag containing a lot of good condition plastics, which could easily be recycled.
Ujala appreciated the fact that there are certain stores here, like the Goodwill store and Vintage Vogue who deal with second hand goods and how that helps the economy. I also reinforced the fact by telling her that I like the culture of free giveaways of items that you don’t need, sometimes items which are expensive and are in good condition. We argued about why countries and Pakistan and not as clean as the west, and basically we arrived at three conclusions. First of all, we do not have enough money to have the kind of infrastructure west has, Walking Probe | Page 7
to keep cities clean. Secondly, because everyone sees a lot of litter being thrown around in India, it passively becomes okay for them to throw their stuff anywhere and everywhere they feel like. Thirdly, there are far more pressing issues in Asia, such as providing food, clear water, shelter and electricity, which are kind of basic needs for any population. In that scenario, waste collection and recycling becomes secondary.
Final note and reflection So Ujala wanted to have an Ice cream, (I didn’t, I am on a diet). We went to Jiffy Treat, and then I saw something beautiful inside. The owner had put a trash bin with a big ‘thank you’ written on it. It made me think that gratitude is a powerful medium to encourage people to do the right thing. The big thank you sign, kind of embraces that. What if all the trash bins had a big thank you written on them? That would an emotional reward people can get when they do something right.
Thank you sign on the trash bin at Jiffy Treat
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