Personal Reflection

Shristi

M2018HRM051

This project has been a fun activity to be part of and brought me much close to TISS than I was
earlier. We took up waste segregation as our topic because in the past we have noticed people
not following the proper protocol of disposing dry and wet waste separately. This problem might
not sound as something which is very important at the first go but at a microlevel, this is a very
important issue to be taken care of. If we segregate the waste at its source, it becomes very easy
to manage it later. The cost of recycling the waste also reduces considerably and a lot of time is
saved in the process.

Moving ahead, we identified the major types of waste being generated in our campus on a day-
to-day basis. Then we identified the sources of these wastes. The next important step was to
identify the major stakeholders involved in the waste generation and capture their reaction on
this. Their reaction was supposed to a measure of the effort required from our side to spread the
awareness on the same. After, this we thought of ways to bridge his reality vs expectation in
terms of people’s knowledge and enthusiasm towards waste segregation. We thought of
increasing the visibility of our campaign first followed by expecting a behavioral change in the
attitude of the stakeholders. For that we undertook a lot of activities like, making a video on
waste segregation to be posted on social media to increase awareness which was shared in
various TISS groups for the sake of visibility of the cause. We made posters and pasted small
notes on dustbin promoting waste segregation.

We believe this small step towards reducing environmental damage in TISS will bear very fruitful
results in the coming future. I feel we never give as much importance to this issue as much it
demands. Also, considering the rising pollution levels it is the need of the hour to focus on such
issues before it’s too late.

Once again I would like to thank our ALD professor to assign us such a thoughtful assignment for
our evaluation, which is interesting as well as contributes to the society.

Mrunal
M2018HRM030
I realized that segregation of waste management is important. There is some awareness in tier 1
cities but there is literally no awareness in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. So, we need to start from
generating awareness in people about segregating dry and wet waste. Only generating
awareness will not do the work. We will need a big mindset shift as I have seen that even in urban
areas people refuse to segregate their waste dumping in spite of being aware. So, in villages
where mostly garbage is burnt, educating them and expecting contribution from their side will
be a bigger challenge.
Also, our highly esteemed PM Narendra Modi has vociferously backed Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan
but we need to do a lot of groundwork than hollow speeches. It is the need of hour to have more
waste treatment plants, state of art equipment and machinery for dealing with garbage,
organized waste collection especially in rural areas and proper amenities for workers dealing with
garbage.
We need to learn from a country like Sweden which is a zero-waste country and they have
commercialized their waste. Their waste is utilized to make electricity and the plant causes no
pollution in the atmosphere. The exhaust air released from plant is cleaner than the surrounding
atmospheric air.
I have realized that this project can have a butterfly effect. I alone can make a difference but we
together can change this world.