5 community traditions that have now become global recycling movements

The world is changing today and people are paying more attention to what was earlier discarded as unimportant and non-required trash. Community based initiatives of recycling soon became successful and took over the world by storm in the last few decades. From picking up the broken pieces and transforming them into something new to repairing a non-functional object together sharing stories and memories while restoring functionality are not only saving the planet but also bringing people closer. We take a look at five community-based recycling initiatives which soon spread to the world.

While food café has taken over the world by storm and now activities are being introduced while you sip and enjoy your hot cuppa, do you know about the Repair Café? Started in 2009 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the Repair Café was then a unique get together where people brought broken, in-need-of-repair objects from their home and tried to fix it instead of discarding it altogether. These objects included torn clothes, electronics, bicycles, and more; and the whole community gathered to fix them up instead of sending them to the dump. This community project has since then spread worldwide with Repair café becoming hosted once in a while.

What happens when a ceramic of glass suddenly falls out of your hands and breaks? You wipe it off the floor and dispose of it. But this Japanese tradition called Kintsugi requires you to carefully collect the pieces, place them side by side (without gluing anything), mix powdered gold or silver in glue and then join everything together. You would then have a new version of the old object which just broke. In fact those fine lines and cracks remain and become part of the look. In this way, you don’t have to discard the old object; you are recycling it, and creating something more beautiful.

When it is the time for spring cleaning every year, apart from making your house look fresh, you also keep your discarded clothes aside to be donated or thrifted forwards. Keeping this philosophy o circular fashion intact, the people of Netherlands pass on carefully selected pieces of clothes to each other. Many keep some that they want to use/ wear and even add to the growing pile. This community wardrobe circulation ensures that people make good use of clothes, recycle them and don’t send them to the landfill if they still have some life left.

What started as an experiment in 2014 expanded to a full-fledged philosophy which stands by the principles of sharing and not really owning some things in the first place. Under this philosophy community members borrow from each other objects which are not used on a daily basis but may come in handy once in a while like a drilling gun or camping gear. Thus, this kicked off as a successful sharing initiative where every person owns something which is used rarely and shares them with the other person when they need it.

This community in Egypt is credited for the recycling of almost 80% of its discarded waste. The members of this community earlier went from door-to-door to collect trash, and now they sift through the mounds of trash while picking out objects that can be recycled. The community works across several Egyptian towns and cities. In fact, one can easily draw a parallel between them and Indian kabadiwallahs, who collect trash and go on to recycle it or selling them ahead.

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