Culture of re-use at tambaram

Saw huge mounds of garbage on the beach today morning while i went for a walk there. I mentally decided not to venture out on the beach on monday mornings;the more our citizens enjoy themselves on sunday eve, the more garbage that seems to be strewn about.Why can there not be more garbage bins(a few which were there were overflowing),why can't out populace collect the garbage they have generated and carry them home instead of throwing them around?Why should the garbage cleaners have to strain their backs and necks to pick up so many pieces instead of picking up from the garbage bin?Why? why? why? I went on and on and lost my pleasure that the usual morning walks on the beach give me.
How do people generate so much garbage i was wondering. When in any doubt or perplexity, mind goes back to one's childhood in tambaram.To draw necessary lessons from the life we lead then and again, to go back to first principles of garbage generation, collection and disposal.
We never had a garbage bin at home, i recall.Then how did we collect and dispose off garbage?Was left thinking long and hard and came up with a few lifestyle changes that have brought in more garbage in our day to day life.
We used to buy monthly rations from TUCS.I remember almost all articles used to be wrapped up in old newspapers and tied with a slim jute thread. We used to have an elaborate ritual of all of us sitting down and opening those parcels;We would not tear those old newspapers, but would religiously fold them and put them away;yes they will be used to line up the shelves in the kitchen.The jute thread will be nicely rolled and put away, one will get to use it sometime.The only snack that will be bought from the shop will be small round britannia biscuits.Even this will be rolled in newspaper and tied with jute thread. At the end of the process of putting away provisions for the month, we will not have any garbage to throw.Not a single item used to come wrapped in plastic bags.What about soaps i wonder, rexona/hamam used to come in paper wraps(?) and will be disposed off alongwith other vegetable/fruit peels. Yes, these 'green' items used to go into a small pit in one corner of the garden, for becoming manure sometime in the distant future.
Even here mommy used to be very particular that we eat most of the fruits with skin on and also the vegetables used to be only very thinly peeled to retain all the vital nutrients for our health.
Never knew shampoos and bottled hair oils. We were staunch, seekakkai powder family and also who believed in coconut oil bought from the shop which used to grind fresh copra into coconut oil, in our own refil bottle.Same goes for other cooking oils too.
No non degradable waste used to be generated at home. No 'onyx' and no corporation fellow coming for taking 'plastic waste'.
Mommy used to be a fanatic in reuse so much so she used to perennially reuse sunlight!Let me explain.We had three large balconys/verandahs which used to be open to the sunlight. Mommie will always manage to dry some stuff or the other every day; so much so , one day one of cousins made this remark that 'chitti will not waste anything, including sunlight'.No atta will be bought, every grain will be graded, sun dried and powdered in the 'chakki'.
We went out for buying vegetables or fruits in the market, we always carried cloth bags.It used to be such a religion that we hated carrying those bags.We used to go meet a friend and later pick up some vegetables;we were saddled with a bag which will be a tell tale sign that we are doing some errand for mommie;not on at all; Hence when we started having our own families, threw those cloth bags out and go empty handed to those shops.Thought and believed plastic bags are god's gift to a modern woman;end to the tyranny of carrying cloth bags when one had to go to the market.
How wrong we were and how very right mommy was.
Best way to solve a problem is to find ways and means so that the problem does not occur in the first place.
ahem.