Garbage as the new currency of India (6 photos)

Do you know where there is really a lot of garbage? In India. There is still a lot in the Philippines, but India is simply ahead of the rest. There are also many poor and hungry people in India. How to combine all this... Exactly.





Have you tried making Indian flatbreads at home? It's very simple, all you need is flour, water and salt.

Cafe "food for garbage"

To be honest, they were the first to come up with this idea in the Philippines, where they offer a kilogram of regular rice for a kilogram of plastic. But people are just delighted, there are a lot of bottles, the food is expensive. At one time, children literally saved the family from a hungry evening.

And in India they went further and in style - they opened an entire cafe for garbage. It operates in the city of Ambikapur in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh with municipal sponsorship.



The food in such cafes is as simple as possible, but satisfying.

Poor people can get a full meal for a kilogram of a certain type of garbage. And tomorrow you can take half a kilo, because it’s hard to collect a kilo before breakfast if you’re hungry.

They mainly accept plastic, from which in India in recent years they have become accustomed to laying road surfaces. There is already one such plastic road in Ambikapur, which required 8 thousand plastic bags.





If they have so much plastic, why isn't all of India on trendy roads yet?

What else can you buy with trash in India?

For almost everything! True - in different parts of the country. A hospital has recently opened there, where you can pay a bag of garbage for an examination with a therapist.

The best thing is schools for trash. In some schools, maintaining a student costs 150-200 rupees per day; if parents do not pay, they will close.



Working for children to sort garbage to pay for their education

And then the government offered the children to pay for their own school by handing over garbage. Two packets per elementary school child per day, so that they have enough time to return home and do their homework.

True, “cheaters” were immediately found, where mom and dad did not want to send the child to work, but they themselves collected garbage and slipped bags of garbage into his hand right after school, so that he would go to hand in his quota and go home quickly.



Well, what is this? Someone needs to start sorting this out.

Well, where there is currency, there is corruption. Garbage corruption.

I consider the idea of selling useful goods (not booze) for garbage to be a real salvation for India. Those who have seen it know that there is a real problem with garbage there. The second problem is that there are no waste processing plants anyway and the garbage stinks in mountains in landfills near the city. But at least it’s not under people’s feet.



This photo should win the Contemporary India Award

A smart solution, for one thing, it accustoms lazy people to work instead of begging.

Do you think we should open such canteens here too, or is it better to just keep accepting plastic?