At home, we separate wet and dry waste. We also keep recyclable items, including plastic bottles, in a separate bag for the gujri wala—the scrap collector.

We pay ₹150 a month for garbage collection. A privately contracted tipper comes on alternate days. But the waste we have separated is thrown together during collection.

This is where the system fails us. We can ask households to segregate, explain why it matters and encourage them to keep doing it. But what happens when their effort is undone at the collection vehicle itself? Who is responsible for ensuring that the waste stays separated and reaches the appropriate facility?

At the same time, I cannot put every problem at the collector’s door.

There is an empty plot near my home where people throw food waste. I have seen food scraps emptied into it from an upstairs house. Some dog owners use the plot as a toilet for their dogs and leave the waste behind. Children buying snacks from a nearby shop discard the wrappers on the road. Some of that litter ends up at our gate.

These are ordinary, repeated actions. Together, they turn a shared space into a dumping ground.

I find it frustrating because this is our neighbourhood. We live here. Why should an empty plot mean that anything can be thrown into it? Why should somebody else have to live beside what we no longer want in our hands?

Children need adults who demonstrate better habits. A shop should provide a place for customers to put their wrappers, and customers should use it. Dog owners should pick up after their dogs. Households should keep food waste for collection rather than throw it onto someone else’s land.

And those collecting our waste must preserve the segregation they expect us to practise.

My own neighbourhood shows me that these responsibilities have to work together. Residents cannot excuse littering by pointing to a failed collection system. Those responsible for collection cannot ask residents to separate waste and then mix it themselves.

I want to see both change.

The wider question: what do households and civic bodies each owe?