Post by Manan Aggarwal

I waited three hours outside the main gate of my alma mater to see the truth for myself. The bins were there. Wet. Dry. Recyclable. Color-coded. Labeled. Familiar. Students passed by. Some paid attention. Most didn’t. Food, plastic, wrappers, cups. All went into whichever bin was closest. Later, I watched the collection truck. It dumped everything into the same pile. No sorting. No second glance. That was the moment it became real. The system wasn’t broken because of a lack of infrastructure. It failed because it depended entirely on people doing the right thing, every single time. There was no feedback. No checks. Just faith. Years ago, I spoke to Dr. Kanishka Jha, PhD. We were talking about building things that matter. He told me something I didn’t fully understand back then. “If you want to solve something real, don’t look away. Sit with the problem. Let it get to you.” So I did. I watched. I waited. And for a while, I did nothing. Now I’m building. The project is called waste-seg. It’s a small open-source tool that uses image input or sensors to understand what’s actually going into bins. No lectures. No pressure. Just quiet visibility. India generates more than 60 million tonnes of waste every year. Most of it ends up mixed and unmanaged. Not because people don’t care. But because there’s no way to see what’s going wrong. This won’t solve everything. But maybe it can help us notice what we’ve stopped seeing. That’s usually where change begins. If you’ve worked on sustainability, civic systems, or behavior design, I’d love to learn from you. And if you’ve ever stood near a bin and thought, this can’t be it — you already understand why this matters. I did too. That’s why I’m building now. I’m happy to share this Waste Segregator project I worked on. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gbGzfTRh #sustainability #wastemanagement #climatechange #sustainable #projects #engineeringforgood