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Plastic Recycling: More than just collect, sort, wash and shred, melt and extrude

Plastic continues to be recycled 


Behind houses that are homes 


Amidst children living in these homes


Under dangerous stairs with a small room
tremendous heat & no fans 

As bundles of plastic keep arriving. 
Either to get threshed from the wire or made into granules
or put into machines or melted at more than summer heat temperature 
or poured into khanchas or all of the above

 
By workers having 12-hour shift as we debate 
electric vehicle and solar energy and make cool art in art fairs.
Workers complete their sleep under the machine that is spewing out chashme
🥽

 Rangolis are made: Small granules of plastic is generated

Reheated and poured over in shapes of toys, glasses and waterguns


Watched over by lone lanes in 45 degree celsius

Watched over by coolers made by the same plastic to keep the machine running

Watched over by goats


       Watched over by capitalism

As guns are spewed out by old plastic


    Recycled by men, women and children 
    who did not produce them


Who have hardly had a road diverged in a wood                                          


                                                             
            Still Building                 
            Whatever We Can                
                                   

Acknowledgements: Thank you to the walk leader for explaining the process of recycling plastic exhaustively and taking us to the different sites in Delhi. Thank you to the various employees working in the e-waste separation and owners of disposal centres who answered our questions patiently even when some of those queries might have been too personal. Thank you for offering us a small glimpse into the everyday life of how and why of plastic and wire recycling.

 

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