Welcome to no. 18 edition of the Saptah! You may have noticed that the frequency of the newsletter has reduced somewhat. And I blame this to - “Being Human”. No, not Sallu Bhai, because how dare anyone blame him for anything!
Being human because the biggest challenge in a project is consistency - laziness and procrastination will always creep in as you settle in (And apparently you can now partially blame it on your genes - Thanks parents!). And of course there is a TED Talk on procrastination - Inside the mind of a master procrastinator by Tim Urban.
Anyways back to the topic at hand and today we will cover - Recycle and Managing waste. With the rise of e-commerce, fast fashion and food delivery the waste in our day to day life is only increasing. The way governments and communities handle waste is going to have a huge impact on our daily lives. Some of the videos below contains images that may be unpleasant / not compatible while eating food, however please do watch.
Below is a short video of how Singapore handles its waste - basically incinerate everything. This works for Singapore for the moment, but as mentioned in the video, treatment of the ash generated takes a lot of effort and needs further thinking.
So you are out to the mall on Sunday. You get thirsty so you pick up a bottle of water from the convenience store. You are about to throw the empty bottle into a trash can when your inner Leo Di Caprio wakes up. He convinces you to walk that extra 50 meters to find a recycle bin. Feeling good about oneself? Conscious clear? Like & share Leo’s post on Insta - Check Check and Check! Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that. Plastic bottles don’t generally recycle and come back to you. The chances of us using a brand new plastic bottle every time is ~98%. So what happens to those “recycled” plastic bottles? Watch the vidoes to learn more.
Cars and especially old cars are really problematic for the environment. As countries commit to net zero emissions, naturally vehicle emission standards will be upgraded and more and more EVs adopted. As a result old vehicles will need to be scrapped. In India you can still find taxis that are Fiat Padminis, old Ambassadors and Maruti 800s that frankly, nostalgia aside, need to be let go. Government of India unveiled its vehicle scrappage policy earlier this year, the details of which you can read here. Below is also a nice flowchart explaining step by step, Maruti Suzuki’s vehicle scrapping process (Source - Maruti Suzuki via the Ken).
Hope you found this interesting & useful.
Let me know what you think and kindly share!
With oil consumption going down In the car industry I wonder what the future of plastic will be. But until then let Singapore enjoy their kopi in plastic bags 😆