Column N. Raghuraman – Honesty is most important even to reduce waste! , N. Raghuraman’s Column: Honesty is the key to reducing litter! Achi-News

N. Raghuraman, Managing Guru

On Friday, before boarding the Doodhwala flight (every morning), I bought T-shirts from the airport shop and while paying, I returned their paper bag and kept the T-shirts neatly in the hand luggage. But the seller didn’t believe I didn’t need a very well printed bag with international branding.

I said, ‘I am among the 69% of Indians who do not need special packaging. As she didn’t understand, I told her, “Amazon recently conducted research to find out how many Indian adults would be happy to receive items ordered online without additional delivery packaging?

The response was that 69% of people do not want additional packaging for products that come from Amazon, while essential goods such as drinks, pastes, detergents, stationery, toilet paper among others already have basic packaging.

Customers who opt for minimal packaging reflect our collective consciousness, which was negatively affected by the litter problem. Meaning, awareness programs run by many people are gradually pushing Indian lifestyle towards Sustainable SWM (Solid Waste Management).

SWM experts are happy with this figure because they believe that if a policy is implemented that prohibits excessive packaging during delivery, many of the litter problems will be solved. That’s because experts believe that packaging waste is a global problem and the packaging industry produces 141 million metric tons of waste each year, a large portion of which comes from e-commerce packaging alone.

Studies also show that a third of municipal waste globally is packaging material alone. Savita Hiremath, member of the SWM Round Board and author of ‘Endlessly Green: Solid Waste Management for Everyone’, believes that when the crisis is this deep, the option is to stop excessive packaging or adopt habits sustainable distribution is the way forward. We all hope that delivery companies can play an important role in reducing waste by adopting minimal packaging initiatives.

But my question is, is this possible? In a country where phones are bricked after opening the package, what should be the minimum packaging required to protect the products? Packages pass through many hands before reaching the customer and this is where they are stolen and damaged.

How can we forget the viral video where a Zomato delivery boy was seen stealing and eating the very food he was supposed to deliver to the customer? Until delivery companies stop exploiting low paid workers, I don’t think anyone will risk cutting back on packaging materials unless customers buy direct.

Working hours should also be fixed because of their honesty and loyalty. When parents do not read moral stories to children at bedtime, moral education is not a subject in the curriculum, small and big screens portray villains as the greatest heroes, then you think, our products are leave without ‘extra protection’ Will you stay? Not having worked on Nishtha, I am unsure about its success. It’s not that Zomato doesn’t have honest employees, there are hundreds of heroes who have even saved people’s lives. But they are few.

The bottom line is that Integrity and honesty are the foundation even when dealing with a less important issue like SWM. what are you saying