My Waste
What you need
Worksheet – “Is waste commonwealth?” (attached below). Projector.
What it is for
- To look honestly at our own waste-producing habits.
- To bring the issue home — from “the country's waste problem” to “what left my house this morning” — which is what the next sessions build on.
- TIME – 50 minutes
- MATERIALS – Games/Quiz, discussions, worksheets, film screening
- TEACHING SEQUENCE
- Open with a fast recap quiz on the previous session.
- Split the class into two teams. Give each team 5 minutes to write 15 one-word or one-line questions. Then they fire them at each other, turn by turn.
- Move to a discussion of each student's own waste. The aim is for them to see their own hand in it, not the city's.
- Ask them to write down, on paper, everything they did today that produced waste. All of it. Then read a few lists out.
- Screen Swechha's film “Wasted”, which follows the journey our waste takes after we stop looking at it. It also sets up the next session, which is a walk to a landfill.
- Film “Wasted” by Swechha - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQWgHN8JxyA (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aDF_CIYnPc&t=191s (Part 2)
- After the screening, run the worksheet quiz (attached) to check what has landed. (10 min)
The manual states these. What it does not state is not here.
How it runs
The manual gives this session no step list. What it does give is below.
- To look honestly at our own waste-producing habits.
- To bring the issue home — from “the country's waste problem” to “what left my house this morning” — which is what the next sessions build on.
TIME – 50 minutes
MATERIALS – Games/Quiz, discussions, worksheets, film screening
TEACHING SEQUENCE
- Open with a fast recap quiz on the previous session.
- Split the class into two teams. Give each team 5 minutes to write 15 one-word or one-line questions. Then they fire them at each other, turn by turn.
- Move to a discussion of each student's own waste. The aim is for them to see their own hand in it, not the city's.
- Ask them to write down, on paper, everything they did today that produced waste. All of it. Then read a few lists out.
- Screen Swechha's film “Wasted”, which follows the journey our waste takes after we stop looking at it. It also sets up the next session, which is a walk to a landfill.
Film “Wasted” by Swechha - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQWgHN8JxyA (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aDF_CIYnPc&t=191s (Part 2)
- After the screening, run the worksheet quiz (attached) to check what has landed. (10 min)
Talking about it
Discussion points, worked examples and the handouts the manual prints with this session.
Points for discussion
- Talk about how a change in the way people live changed the way they throw. Nobody decided to produce more waste. It arrived with the packaging.
- Ask students to compare themselves with a grandparent at the same age. What do they do that their grandparents did not — the water bottle, the food delivery, the online parcel, the balloons, the new phone every few years? And what did their grandparents' house throw away in a week, and where did it go?
- India collects 1,56,449 of the 1,70,339 tonnes of solid waste it produces every day — a collection rate of 92%, which is higher than most students will guess.
Collection is not the same as handling. Of the total, 54% is treated or processed and 24% goes to a landfill. That leaves 22% — 37,373 tonnes every day — with no recorded destination at all. (Central Pollution Control Board, Annual Report on Solid Waste Management 2021-22.)
- As people earn more and buy more, the volume climbs. Nothing about the trend is mysterious: more packaged food, more delivery, more things replaced rather than repaired.
Ask the class where the extra will go, given the figure above. The honest answer is that nobody has said.
- The heaviest part of an Indian bin is wet waste — peels, leftovers, tea leaves. That is the part that could be composted at home or in the colony and never enter the system at all.
It is also the part that ruins everything else. Wet waste mixed with dry waste makes the paper and plastic too dirty to sell and the organic waste too contaminated to compost. Uncollected waste ends up in drains and water bodies; waste dumped in the open produces leachate that reaches the groundwater, and gases that add to warming. Every one of those problems begins with two streams going into one bin.
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.