Eco Top Trumps: India
I knew India would be a sensory overload, but honestly it’s like no other place I’ve visited! The scores are purely based on waste/recycling/plastic in the country. It doesn’t reflect our experiences as travellers there! It’s also a vast country, this account is based on visits mostly through Rajasthan!
The evening we arrived in Jaipur we headed up to our hostel rooftop bar for a drink - only to find out it was a Hindu holiday, and therefore a dry day across the country. We stayed up there just drinking soft drinks; then as it got to about 3 minutes to midnight, sure enough, we were offered beer. We got up to leave after enjoying a couple of kingfishers, and to my horror the bar staff picked up the glass bottles, and proceeded to chuck them off the rooftop, onto the wasteland 5 storeys down! That pretty much set the tone for what the rest of our time was going to be like!
Single use plastic - 7
In a game of top trumps this would be India’s secret weapon; there was actually a lack of single use plastic around. On the train we took between Jaipur and Agra a man was offering nuts as a snack; he had them in a huge metal bowl, and then served them in folded pieces of newspaper. Of course all the water that’s drunk by tourists is in plastic bottles, but a lot of public spaces had water taps (we just didn’t want to risk it!). A lot of the ‘side of the road’ restaurants we ate at could have easily used plastic/throw away plates etc, but it was almost always metal cups and plates.
We were almost never given a plastic bag in any shop, instead lovely sari bags are used. I think these are offcuts of fabric made into different sized bags - they’ve since proved super useful travelling, popping shoes, bikinis or dirty laundry in!
Sari bags coming in useful on our travels!
Ease of recycling - 1
This was bad - when we did find ourselves using plastic there just wasn’t anywhere to recycle it. In lots of the other countries we’ve visited, if we couldn’t find a bin we’d hold onto the bottle (or whatever it was) until we came across somewhere to recycle it, even if it meant bringing it back to our hostel. None of our hostels had recycling, which didn’t bode well! There were often bins that had different colours (i.e. blue and green), there wasn’t any English on them, but even if it said something to do with recycling in Hindi on it, they definitely weren’t used in the right way!
I know in India there is a huge system of informal work surrounding waste management. It’s such a large country, we explored one area and felt like we’d only scratched the surface, so to negotiate and manage a waste system is a monumentous task that hasn’t been undertaken yet. Having said this, a lot of people rely on the informal system for their livelihoods, and although socially this is not a simple issue, I think a lot of recycling does occur this way.
Clean environment - 0
A typical roadside view
This shouldn’t have really come as a shock to me. I’d seen pictures and read a lot about India’s waste problem, but I was still taken aback with the amount of rubbish there was. Honestly the rubbish was endless. Rubbish piled up on streets, in rivers, on the roadside, even sacred temples had litter all over them. It wasn’t just cities either, we drove through a lot of rural areas that were inundated with it as well. We watched a cow devour a whole paper cup, and often saw dogs and pigs grazing through piles of rubbish at the roadside.
Jaipur’s Amber Fort, with the dirtiest body of water I’ve ever seen. We watched what we think must have been eels swimming around amongst the rubbish and sludge.
Local attitude - 0
When I asked one of our hostels about their waste disposal they said a lady came round to pick up their rubbish; that most hotels and restaurants had a similar system, but households varied greatly. I did notice a couple of signs up - mostly about saving water, but a couple about plastic bags, though they seemed very ineffective in their environment. Recycling, or indeed the environment in general, just didn’t seem to be on people’s minds.
‘No plastic bags’
On a scooter trip around Udaipur we stopped in a little village for a cold drink. We bought a couple of cheeky kids an ice lolly each and before we even realised the wrappers had just been discarded on the roadside.
Final thoughts
The lowest scoring country so far! You’d be praying your opponent played single used plastic with this card…
There’s a lot of room for improvement here. The next generation needs to be inspired to look after the environment around them; however, this can only be enabled with effective waste management as well.
Total score: 8/40