Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Changing the mindset..

By,

Guest Writer - G Krishnan
gk(at)fireprosystems.com,

"
There is a small tea shop near my office and when we go for a chai, I always noticed that the used tea cups (plastics) are thrown into the gutter nearby. I have told the owner of the shop to keep a small carton box (trash box) and tell the people to drop the used cups into the box. But he was reluctant and it is understandable. But I did not leave it. I showed him the drain near by and there were >1000 used cups.
I told him that it is his responsibility too to educate people saying, when it rains all these plastic cups will clog the drain and we complain about municipality that they are not cleaning the drain. Drain is only for water to flow thru and not for any hard materials.
Tomorrow if it rains heavily and your shop gets submerged/damaged due to clogging of drain, it is because of you and not because of the Govt. Ever since he started keeping a trash box near his tea stall and I can say atleast the no. of cups thrown into the drain is reduced.
Also I take this opportunity to tell all that it is all of us who can make or break. If we decide to spread this simple message across, we can save the deaths of people esp children (since the poor children play in these areas), cattle etc. during floods/heavy rains.
Also since these plastics are not bio-degradable, it must be trashed in a proper way for recycling.
When ever I visit a road side stalls, I ensure that I spread this message.
To conclude I must say that I changed the "mindset" of the tea stall owner to "set mind". Let all of us set mind in changing this bad practice/menace.

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to voice out my story. Hope it benefits the entire society.

"

6 comments:

shalini said...

hmmm....???good job dude..!!even i will try to spread your msg wherever i can...
good job..keep it up..

Anonymous said...

Thats a really good deed...its these small things that make a difference

Rashmi

Pavitra said...

BRAVO!

Ur a true Citizen Earth! :)

broca's area said...

good:)

Anu said...

Thatz good. This reminds me of the arguments I have had in train whenever I object to people throwing plastic tea cups out of the window. They just want to save the effort of walking up to the wash basin(below which there is a dust bin) because they anyways are never going to see the place where they threw it.

Alistair D'souza said...

one problem as you pointed out is that there are not enough dustbins around.. esp in trains...