Until last year, I never thought twice about where my trash went. I’d toss out a chips packet, feel a little guilty, and move on. But during a school trip to a local waste segregation center, everything changed.

We saw huge piles of mixed garbage — food scraps stuck to plastic, electronics tangled with old clothes. It was chaos. The workers had to handpick recyclables from the mess. I remember thinking, “This is my trash. And it’s making someone else's life harder.”

Waste management isn’t just about where we throw things — it’s about how we throw them. If we separate dry and wet waste, use compost bins, or recycle properly, we make the system work better. Right now, most Indian cities generate thousands of tonnes of waste every day — but only a small percentage is actually recycled or composted. The rest ends up in landfills or gets burned, harming both the environment and people living nearby.

My family made small changes. We started using separate bins for wet waste (which we compost) and dry recyclables. We also stopped tossing old electronics in the trash — we now drop them off at e-waste centers. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

So next time you crumple up that biscuit wrapper, just pause for a second. Ask yourself: where is this going, and could I have done better?

Because waste doesn’t disappear — it just moves somewhere else.