Garbage

Try to imagine a life without water. Just think of your morning routine: you drink water from your filter or tap, you flush your toilet, take a shower and brush your teeth.

Rena and Agnes are a bustling duo raising our consciousness about waste in Auroville. They focus on promoting good segregation and organising a clean waste centre.

One Saturday morning in November 2017, a bunch of Auroville youth hanging out in the Solar Kitchen parking lot had the ‘wild idea’ to clean-up some of the ever-increasing amounts of rubbish in Auroville.

Zero waste is the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse, and recovery of all products, packaging, and materials, without burning them, and without discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.

Ten years of creating art from premium waste.

The Working Committee said that garbage dumping is taking place in and around Auroville by some Aurovilians/Auroville units and restaurants.

We can learn quite a lot about a community by observing what its members consume; and even more telling is what they throw away! Whilst living in Europe, I was often quite astonished to find perfectly usable, sometimes even brand new, items discarded in rubbish bins and, on occasion, even felt compelled to rescue an object and find a good home for it!

The garbage heaps on the fields and along the roads leading into Auroville are increasing. What’s being done about it?

The Sea Trashion show draws a crowd and the RE-CENTRE begins.

A key highlight of the Litter Free Auroville celebrations has long been the Trashion Show, and this year was no different. A beyond full-capacity crowd at the Visitor’s Centre witnessed an incredible display of beautiful and creative fashion designs made out of trash.

There is a strong group of youth (ages 30-45) engaged in solid waste work in Auroville. Indeed, all of the people featured in this article fall roughly into that age range.

Last summer, Min Ameen and Akshay Poongta made a presentation to the Auroville community on the topic of ‘Social marketing frameworks and its application to waste management in Auroville’.