Care-is-Cure: Pollution

The PJ (poor joke) above might no longer remain a PJ if banana peel is replaced by a typical problematic situation one encounters in daily routine. The question remains unanswered then: Why do some people find it difficult to act beyond cure? They do think 'Prevention is The Best Cure' though! I was no different from them! But now my journey is gathering speed, hopefully in the direction that the blog is supposed to drive towards. Checkout my other blogs and work at http://www.worldOFkaizen.com/

Showing posts with label Pollution. Show all posts

Sunday, 24 June 2018

Mission Zero-Plastic!

Are dustbin bags, sticky bags, half liter water bottle, etc. banned?

Political posters in flex material are not penalised! So does it mean flex material is exempt selectively? Or is political fraternity exempt from discipline?

Do you mean to say citizens should carry steel vessels to buy milk, meat, fish, etc. all the way to their workplaces so that they can shop on their way back home after a long day?

Don't you think exempting branded packaged goods and foods in plastic is discriminatory to small businesses?

Such and many other doubts began circulating on WhatsApp as the plastic ban was announced by the State of Maharashtra.

If such confusion was expected by design as a strategy then it's a good move by the administrators.

Good because such confusion forces people to think intentionally as it has happened already. As a result, people have at least begun thinking of alternatives out of fear of punishment though.

But targeting to achieve any (Zero-Plastic kind of) result measures without enabling the corresponding processes in place always have had serious implications with associated costs. Time and again this has got proven by itself.

In Nagpur, for instance, out of fear some people got rid of banned plastic bags by dumping them in rivulets.

If such confusion, however, is by chance then there's a bigger worry.

Bigger worry because it might mean, there's a lack of well-designed time-bound plan, also lack of the design to execute the ban itself holistically expecting it to aim Zero-Plastic target! In fact, adequate design learning from others (especially from countries successful in handling the plastic menace) is the first step in any such project. Bigger worry because lack of meticulousness in such initiatives usually leads to sub-optimisation harming the nobility of the purpose itself.

Unless every stakeholder gets mindfully engaged in averting the plastic-pollution-menace and the forthcoming disaster therefrom, the costs of the short term approaches towards it will get out of control. There's a need to take a relook at it in order to scrutinise the blanket-ban, if any, if not done so already.

Better also to be innovative on making the recycling more effective. Not only does the arrest of the plastic need to be at manufacturing level but also at desire-based or want-based consumption level. A pictorial do-don't will go a long way in preventing the confusion among the users and the administrators.

In any case the Zero-Plastic target is an arduous task at least in near future since for some applications cost effective substitute is yet to get invented.

Sustainability of the planet is the priority number-1 but the ban itself needs to be sustainable for that!

Here's my 140 character Tweet plan of action (POA) revolving around the Kaizen technique: *MISER!

Be a MISER stakeholder on Plastic!

MINDFUL of enabling process to evolve Zero-Plastic result!
INNOVATE packaging!
SCRUTINISE blanket-ban!
ELIMINATE production!
REDUCE, REUSE! Collect to RECYCLE!

(*MISER: Minimise. Improvise. Simplify. Eliminate. Reduce.)

Sunday, 16 March 2014

Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms !

"Green tax of Rs 20 crore in kitty, but pollution in Thane remains high!"

This news that I read while sipping tea after a long drive of over 100 kilometers across Mumbai and Thane, reinforced writing this blogpost and its title.

Actually I had already begun to write this blogpost on studying various signals over a few days. Only some of them had 5...4...3...2...1... 'Second-tickers' that indicate time in 'seconds' the next signal would show up.

More than half of almost a hundred signals that I studied didn't have 'ticking countdown timers' nor were they visible except to the first row of vehicles.

Purpose of the 'ticking' is to provide transparency so that speeding vehicles could predict when to halt and stationary vehicles could 'start' their engines just-in-time. Former would prevent accidents. And both, the former and the latter, would save fuel as well as pollution by preventing idle running of engines.

So it's not necessarily the old vehicles that cause pollution. Attitude of drivers in spite of the infrastructure such as above (or the lack of it) also contribute their might. Even new vehicles holding 'pollution-in-control' certificate 'vomit pollution'.

Causes may be many that need to be treated at root cause level. It's actually easy and less expensive to do so.

Lack of proper maintenance, for instance.

Attitude of 'managing' to seek pollution certificate.

Fitting 'timers' at all signals or fitting them at visible level.

Marking an area at busy signals (as yellow box-1, 2, 3, say) that indicates those many vehicles within a maked box could pass through a given 'timer-setting' of the signal. So only one batch of vehicles within the yellow box-1 would pass within the fall of one signal.

Vehicles within yellow box-2 need not race-to-chase since the timer-setting of signal-1 won't be adequate to get them cleared. See the idea in sketch.

The denomination of the boxes can be standardized in steps equivalent to the units of signal-time so that signal time can be adjusted as per demand. This is equivalent to a 'pitch' in 'just-in-time' or 'lean' operations that bring in visibility. Thereby it will reduce costs such as fuel consumption and pollution in case of traffic.

Installing proper signboards and indicators. In absence of that, many a time a driver ends up getting stuck on signals while he could have easily taken a couple of flyovers to reach his destination without any waiting time.

This is analogous to a 50-story building employing say four high-technology lifts: one each reserved for going upto 10th floor, upto 20th floor, upto 30th floor, and upto 40th floor respectively; but not having a few pennies worth signboards. A first time visitor might end up landing into a wrong lift and shuttling among lifts and floors. Murphy's law usually takes over in such cases!

Tackling habits of people pressing switches of all the lifts at a time without reading signboards if at all they are readable, is another story of course!

Shear waste of energy! Many a time road-signs are hidden behind political hoardings full of birthday wishes.

In short, root cause of pollution is the wasteful human-activity that adds costs rather than value.

Unless there is a reward mechanism to recognise all those stakeholders who involve themselves in finding out non-value-activities, merely punishing at symptomatic level is not going to be of much help.

Authorities must listen to their voice on their real time difficulties. Leaders need to go to corresponding workplace (Gemba) in real time (Genjitsu) in order to do so so that they can see the difficulties themselves. They must treat those difficulties at root cause levels rather than merely giving first-aids to symptoms.

In absence of doing so, many more 'crores' might get collected as 'pollution tax' in kitty, but abnormality levels will remain high in multiples of hundreds!'

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: