Where does your toothbrush go?

Of course in your mouth- and then maybe on the toothbrush stand.

But where does it go once you are done with it? Since dentists recommend changing your toothbrush every 6 months and you are let's say 30 years old for arguments sake where are your 60 toothbrushes? and where do all the collective millions and millions of toothbrushes land up from your neighborhood, and your town and state and country and all countries together? Can you imagine the thick plastic, rubber coated (for firm grip) toothbrush floating on the ocean surface far far away? I can.

Anyway- enough about toothbrushes- let's talk about shampoo bottles, and facewashes and moisturizing bottles, nail polish bottles, dirty diapers, sanitary pads. Just kidding- though it just may not be that funny.

Only mankind can be as silly as to inculcate ‘out-of-sight out-of-mind’ in day to day waste management. It's a miracle of our mother planet that we're not choking to death already or maybe my fellow-citizens from Delhi may beg (cough) to differ.

Space mission- #lifesavingidea for SpaceX's Mr.Elon Musk and others- Instead of looking at other ‘habitable’ planets in the universe-maybe we should concentrate on the one that we know and already inhabitate. A genius idea struck me recently while reading a horrifying article on how some countries think it’s okay to dump their toxic waste on other less equipped countries, endangering the local human and wildlife population. Maybe instead of sending more and more satellites up in the space, we should find a better way to send waste in the space and dump it on another inhabitable planet.

Don’t worry about finding life there- if at all there is-maybe we will have an alien invasion in retaliation of the garbage dumping!

In Indian mythology- it’s easy to find answers to almost every problem (Those wise sages!) A yug is a long long long era of many years. The sages have explained that the 4 types of work forces(also known as castes) will be most influential in different phases within a yug in a cyclic manner. 

The first phase is when the intellectuals are the ones wielding most power- hence the stories of gurus and rishis to relatively modern times of renaissance.

After that it would be the Warriors that would then be most important sect of the society. A warrior wages wars, expands territory and protects the people (circa age of the vikings to age of kings, emperors and empires).  

Then once territorial disputes have settled so much, is where currency would rule and businessmen and business owners would be major policy makers and drive growth on the planet. 

The last phase of any group is where the people who clean will rule. The age of cleanliness and waste management. I think we are about to enter the last phase- where clean water, air and land are our biggest concern- or atleast should be.

While, we spoke about space tech and ancient wisdom- it is required neither to make a significant difference.

1. Make the Effort- Separate your Dry trash from Wet. There is no magical elf 'out there' doing that for you. Set up Dry and Wet trash bags in home AND at your workplace and MAKE IT WORK. Get your cleaning staff on board to help 

2. Reuse, Recycle- Try to Reuse. The toothbrush becomes a tile cleaner and then the plastic part helps get the string in your pajamas. No shame in re-using and recycling. Recycling is no magic trick where your toothbrush suddenly converts to polythene bags. 

3. Try going Natural- Use cloth instead of plastic. When Maharashtra govt. banned plastic for a week- everybody was more than happy to carry their own utensils to buy milk and Dahi. Too bad we have no discipline- it could have been a splendid success. Try to avoid throwaways. Use sustainable, reusable material for your daily work. 

4. Talk about it. It's very important to keep up the tempo and get more and more people on this task.

If we don't- we are not doing justice to the people whom we have brought to this planet ( aka children- the future generation) and all they will have to do is clean up the MESS you've left behind you. Figuratively and Literally! 

Let's do what we can. While we can.