To say that India has a problem with rubbish would be a massive understatement. Common practice dictates that once your bin is full you can take it out and throw it in the nearest water course, down a bank or for a bit of variety wait until a big pile has built up then set fire to it. It is such a shame that so many areas of outstanding natural beauty are tarnished by the huge amounts of litter when it is such an easily avoidable problem. Of greater concern however, are the health issues raised by having such large piles of rubbish for dogs and children to frollick in and the pollution to streams and river which people bath in and sometimes drink from.
To raise awareness of this issue we ran a series of workshops with the children from Mrs Sudershana’s orphanage in conjunction with Delhi Public School's Environment Club. During the first session we took the children out to pick up litter in one of the Nature Parks near to the school. We filled bags to take to the refuse collection point and saved all the clothes and shoes. The second session involved using the shoes and clothes to make a scarecrow and the children painted banners which we displayed around the local tourist sites to promote environmentally friendly practice and encourage them to take their litter away with them.
Despite some of the children looking at us like we were insane when we told them what we had planned, they all got really involved in the project managed to remove twenty large sacks of litter out of the park and had lots of fun getting messy with paint to make the banners. The Environment Club has done lots of good work and has plans to petition the local government to put more facilities in place for waste management and recycling.
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