Two Bins Zero Excuses

Two bins.

No excuse. Lalitpur municipality purposefully put those there. Green for organic.

Red for non-organic.

Big clearNepali sign.

A solid metal post firmly concreted in place.

It's not going to move.

It was designed, a budget allocated, infrastructure installed and the assumption was: okay, people will use them now. And yet look at the ground around it. Wrappers, plastics, all scattered right next to the two perfectly good bins.

Not even behind the bins, just at the foot of them. And that's where I can't get past it.

The system is in place.

There's no effort required to find the bin-it’s right there, open, empty, waiting.

And still... We always talk about waste management problems in Kathmandu being a government failure-not enough bins, not enough collection, not enough system.

And they often are.

But this is a photo from somewhere the system turned up and did its bit. What's not turned up is a bit trickier to solve than putting in a bin. Because when waste is dumped on the ground, and not in the bin, it doesn’t just stay on the ground.

It will get burned, it will find rivers, it will be broken down into particles and enter the air everyone, including the person who dumped it, will breathe. The bin is not the tricky bit.

Apparently, it's us.