The garbage truck that visits the 5 blocks of JP Nagar’s Brigade Millennium community every morning usually leaves overflowing, and often with things that could be reused or recycled. Mayflower Block, 15 floors high, with about 220 families is a major contributor to this.

Some of us were already aware of ITC's (paperboards) efforts at garbage segregation in Yelahanka, where their team goes door-to-door regularly to buy recyclable/reusable garbage. Taking a cue from that, and with the end objective of reducing the quantity of garbage that travels several kilometers to the landfill, the ‘Blue Drum Campaign’ was launched by the Mayflower Residents’ Association in November 2008.

Since the building is fitted with a garbage chute, residents are used to the convenience of just throwing everything unwanted down the chute. Today, the chute is to be used only for wet waste – kitchen waste and toilet waste. Every floor has been provided with a Blue Recycle Drum placed next to the garbage chute for dry waste – paper, board, plastic, glass, metal, e-waste.

Drum art (Pic: Arathi M Y)

To make this campaign fun for the residents, before the launch, one afternoon was spent doing ‘Drum Art’ – decorating the blue drums to make them look nice and attractive. Drum Art involved both children and adults. Then, residents and their house maids were educated house-to-house on garbage segregation – what garbage segregation is, how source-segregation of their garbage at home helps, how to do it.

To educate residents, we went door to door. A single briefing for everyone didn't look possible. First we got a volunteer from each floor who was trained - and who in turn went door to door. We gave every house a segregation guidelines flier to put on their fridge. Maids were not always at home when we visited. We used another method to train them. We have a lady security guard at the guard house where the maids sign in every day. We got her to explain to the maids as and when they came to work.

Garbage segregation process (poster courtesy: Arathi M Y)

Instructions on how to dispose of the waste were graphically displayed at strategic points – what goes into the chute and what into the blue drum. The house-keeping staff, who are responsible for carrying away the blue drum waste, were also trained on collection and sorting the stuff deposited in the blue drums. They are now provided with a nice trolley that makes transportation of the drum waste from the 15 floors to the basement storage room very convenient.

The total initial investment was about Rs.11,000 – on the blue drums, trolley and instruction signs.

Children were involved in the overall campaign too, along with the rest of the household.

Arathi is a resident of Mayflower Block, Brigade Millennium, JP Nagar 7th Phase.

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