Today’s dirt and ignorance will have to be cleaned up and paid for by tomorrow’s generations. FSL India’s HBP volunteers, staff and school teachers participating in street cleaning with schoolchildren in Kandlur on 13^th of December, was an obvious example of that. Seeing schoolchildren climbing down into the trenches alongside of the road, collecting bottles, plastic wrappers, old paper etc.

For these particular children, the street cleaning session was faced with enthusiasm. The children were divided into groups, each responsible for a specific type of waste, such as plastics or glass bottles. They were very eager to find and pick up as much trash as possible, filling several big bags in just an hour. The children should be focusing on their education and future! Then again, this is an important lesson for the children, as it lays in their future to manage the waste we are producing right now; waste that is the result of our generations’ ignorant behaviour when it comes to littering and polluting.

The street cleaning was successful in the sense that the children were happy to help and that we were able to collect a lot of waste. Still, the streets were far from clean at the time we had to wrap the session up. To clean all the street waste in the area, it seems as though a lifetime would be required. And even if we were to collect waste every day for the rest of our lives – it would not be enough, if people continue to throw plastic and other waste in the nature. What needs to change is clearly the mindset, littering behaviour and waste management.

After collecting waste, all the bags were opened up, the collected items separated into multiple categories to make recycling possible. Recycling is a much better idea than burning the waste or just throwing it in a landfill; but we should consider that even recycling is not the ideal way to go. Re-thinking what materials we use (especially one-time-use plastic) would mean exponentially reducing waste!

Our hope is that in the future, especially after seeing the children cleaning the streets, the community surrounding the school will stop and think before deciding what to do with their trash. And it’s not just about them – we should all stop and think before we produce or buy something. This is part of climate justice for future generations!