Exposure Walks
How it runs
The manual gives this session no step list. What it does give is below.
Choose one: a landfill walk, or a visit to a recycling unit. Which one depends on the age of the students and the size of the batch.
A landfill is genuinely hazardous — the air, the ground, the fires, the truck traffic. Do not take young children, and do not take a large group. Where either applies, go to a recycling unit instead. Whoever does go should wear closed shoes and a mask, and the group stays together.
Landfill Walk
Duration – 3 to 4 hours
Delhi's waste goes mostly to three landfills that everyone in the city can name: Bhalswa, Okhla and Ghazipur. All three passed the capacity they were built for years ago. All three are still being added to every day. Ghazipur is tall enough to be a landmark, it has caught fire more than once, and part of it has slid off.
Standing at the bottom of one puts the whole chapter in front of a student at once. The chips packet and the cold drink bottle they threw away last week, without a thought about where it would end up, are somewhere in that hill.
And there are people on it. Waste-pickers — the manual calls them rag pickers — climb these hills to pull out whatever can be sold, through the smell and the smoke, usually without gloves or boots. They are not scavenging at the edge of the system. They are the part of the system that works. Our waste is their income, and their work is why anything gets recycled at all. Brief the class before you go: they are going to watch people work, not watch a spectacle, and nobody is photographed without being asked.
Recycling Unit Visit
Duration – 4 to 5 hours
A recycling unit shows students what happens to the waste somebody wants — mostly plastic. It arrives, it is separated by type, and then it is washed, shredded, melted and turned back into raw material. The visit makes the argument for segregation better than any slide can: everything in the building depends on the material turning up clean and sorted.
Say the other half out loud too. Recycling is good; it is not the answer. It takes energy, it takes water, and most plastic loses quality every time it goes round, so it delays the landfill rather than cancelling it. Refusing and reusing come first, and neither of them costs anything.
Talking about it
Discussion points, worked examples and the handouts the manual prints with this session.
More from the manual
Choose one: a landfill walk, or a visit to a recycling unit. Which one depends on the age of the students and the size of the batch.
A landfill is genuinely hazardous — the air, the ground, the fires, the truck traffic. Do not take young children, and do not take a large group. Where either applies, go to a recycling unit instead. Whoever does go should wear closed shoes and a mask, and the group stays together.
Landfill Walk
Duration – 3 to 4 hours
Delhi's waste goes mostly to three landfills that everyone in the city can name: Bhalswa, Okhla and Ghazipur. All three passed the capacity they were built for years ago. All three are still being added to every day. Ghazipur is tall enough to be a landmark, it has caught fire more than once, and part of it has slid off.
Standing at the bottom of one puts the whole chapter in front of a student at once. The chips packet and the cold drink bottle they threw away last week, without a thought about where it would end up, are somewhere in that hill.
And there are people on it. Waste-pickers — the manual calls them rag pickers — climb these hills to pull out whatever can be sold, through the smell and the smoke, usually without gloves or boots. They are not scavenging at the edge of the system. They are the part of the system that works. Our waste is their income, and their work is why anything gets recycled at all. Brief the class before you go: they are going to watch people work, not watch a spectacle, and nobody is photographed without being asked.
Recycling Unit Visit
Duration – 4 to 5 hours
A recycling unit shows students what happens to the waste somebody wants — mostly plastic. It arrives, it is separated by type, and then it is washed, shredded, melted and turned back into raw material. The visit makes the argument for segregation better than any slide can: everything in the building depends on the material turning up clean and sorted.
Say the other half out loud too. Recycling is good; it is not the answer. It takes energy, it takes water, and most plastic loses quality every time it goes round, so it delays the landfill rather than cancelling it. Refusing and reusing come first, and neither of them costs anything.
Where this comes from
Bridge the Gap is a compilation. This is what the manual records for this session.
The manual prints no source for this session. It is published here as Swechha has used it, adapted over years of classroom work; if you recognise its origin, tell us and we will credit it.
Before you start sets out where the compendium as a whole comes from.
Next
Where to go from here.