COUNTDOWN TO ZERO Thiruveedhi Amman Koil Street Residents Association (TAKSRA), which covers over 80 families, shares its “7I Formula” for promoting a zero-waste lifestyle in the community. 1. Initiate conversations When a community is seeking to go zero-waste, it has to first approach the issue as a community. “Initiate conversations with the people living in your street. Create a social circle within your street,” says K. L. Bala, a member of TAKSRA. 2. Initiate discussions When a community network is in place, the next step involves brainstorming for ideas and sifting through them, with debates. Out of these discussions, a strategy would crystallise automatically. 3. Initiaite action Lay down the difficult rules, early on. TASKARA made it mandatory for all apartment complexes and individual houses to have composting pits. The idea was to segregate waste and ensure very little of it left the locality and reached the landfill. 4. Involve children Teach children what effective waste management is all about. “We taught our children what could be recycled at home and why they should recycle and how they could help. This has helped us greatly in our mission,” says Bala. The sooner the next generation gets involved, the more sustainable an initiative gets. 5. Improvise strategy “At Thiruveedhi Amman Koil Street, we successfully composted our waste and minimised the use of plastics and recycled them. But the bins in the street were still choked with plastic and other trash, dumped not by residents but by passersby. So, we decided to go bin-free. We keep an eye on our street and make sure that it stays clean,” says Bala. 6. Introduce monitoring When the residents’ association promoted the use of cloth bags and other eco-friendly alternatives to plastic, there were still a few who would shop using plastic bags. “When we spot someone using a plastic bag, we remind them about the community’s initiative. This has helped,” he says. 7. Inculcate habits Each member of TAKSRA is expected to take ownership of his street and identify challenges. They are expected to walk around the street regularly and look for stray trash, pick it up and put it in the recycling bin.

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