The first week of the Mohalla Initiative was a lesson in persistence. I spent my mornings at the bakery, not just to buy my own bread, but to encourage others. I saw the hesitation in my neighbours’ eyes as they approached the counter. Some had remembered their cloth bags; many had not. “It is okay” I would say with a smile, handing a clean, reused plastic bag to a neighbour who had forgotten theirs. “Don’t take a new one from Manzoor Sahib. Use this one again. It has many lives left in it.”
This was the second pillar of my plan: The Art of the Second Life. I realized that since plastic was nearly indestructible, they should treat it as a permanent resource rather than a disposable convenience. I set up a small point/location at the Mohalla centre where people could drop off clean polythene bags they had already brought home. Others could then pick them up for their shopping. The concept was simple, but it required a shift in mindset. People were used to the ‘newness’ of the bags. A used bag felt dirty or cheap to some.
I had to demonstrate that a clean, reused bag was a badge of honour, a sign of a person who cared for the land and the Wular Lake. I spent my afternoons at the local school with Uzma. We had started a project with the children, teaching them how to turn non-recyclable plastic into something useful.
We called it ‘Eco-bricks.’ The children would take discarded plastic wrappers, the ones that were too small or too dirty to be reused and stuff them tightly into empty plastic bottles. “Pack it down!” I encouraged a group of ten-year-olds. “It must be as hard as a stone.” The children were fascinated and even more obedient, may be due to excitement or due to the regard as I was offering them free tuition during the summer or winter vacations. They turned it into a game, competing to see who could create the densest bottle. As they worked, I talked to them about the science of the material.
I told them that the plastic inside the bottle was now trapped, unable to reach the lake or the fields. When we had enough bottles, we would use them to build a small garden wall for the school or for the kitchen garden in our lawns. “We are giving the plastic a second life” Uzma told the class.
Instead of poison, it becomes a tool. Instead of killing the flowers, it will protect them.” But the initiative faced challenges. Gul Maam, while supportive of the idea, found that the ‘No – Bag Day’ he had agreed to try was causing friction. Some customers from outside the Mohalla were angry when they weren’t given a bag. They accused him of being difficult. “I am losing sales, dear son” Gul Maam said one evening, his face weary. “People don’t want to think when they shop. They just want their things.” Stay with it, Gul Maam” I urged. “The Mohalla is behind you. Look at the collection bin, it’s full every day. People are starting to get it.
We just need to show them that the alternative is better.” I decided to create a visual representation of their progress. I placed a large glass jar in the village centre. Every time someone reused a bag or brought their own, they would put a small pebble in the jar. By the end of the week, the jar was half-full. It was a tangible sign of the ‘simple practice’ in action. I also addressed the most difficult issue, the diapers.
I worked with a group of women in the village to revive the use of cloth diapers. They designed a modern version more absorbent and easier to clean than the ones the elders remembered. It was a slow sell, but for the families who made the switch, the reduction in their household waste was immediate and dramatic. “My bin is empty now” the young mother from the meeting told me. “I used to have to carry a heavy bag of filth to the dump every two days. Now, there is nothing.” I felt a deep sense of satisfaction. The numbers in my own notebook were reflecting the change.
My household count had dropped from twelve or fifteen a day to nearly zero new items. We were living off their existing stock of plastic, treating each bag like a precious tool. But as I looked beyond the Mohalla, I saw the scale of the task that remained. The neighbouring villages were still feeding the canals. The town was still pumping out thousands of tons of waste. The initiative was a small island of sanity in a vast sea of synthetic madness. I knew I had to expand. I had to follow the water.
I had to see the canals and the streams, the veins that connected my village to the rest of the world. I needed to understand how to stop the tide before it reached the heart of the valley. The village begins to embrace the reuse of plastic and the creation of ‘Eco-bricks’, turning waste into a resource. A journey to map the local water-waves will soon reveal the interconnected nature of the pollution crisis.
The Author, hailing from a Wular fringe Village, is a writer and can be reached at saltafrasool@yahoo.com
